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Of
The Nature of Things
by
Lucretius [Titus Lucretius Carus]
Translated
by William Ellery Leonard
January,
1997 [Etext #785]
Project
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BY
TITUS LUCRETIUS CARUS
Mother
of Rome, delight of Gods and men,
Dear
Venus that beneath the gliding stars
Makest
to teem the many-voyaged main And fruitful lands- for all of living things
Through thee alone are evermore conceived, Through thee are risen to visit the
great sun-Before thee, Goddess, and thy coming on, Flee stormy wind and massy
cloud away, For thee the daedal Earth bears scented flowers, For thee waters
of the unvexed deep Smile, and the hollows of the serene sky Glow with
diffused radiance for thee!
For
soon as comes the springtime face of day, And procreant gales blow from the
West unbarred, First fowls of air, smit to the heart by thee, Foretoken thy
approach, O thou Divine, And leap the wild herds round the happy fields Or
swim the bounding torrents. Thus amain, Seized with the spell, all creatures
follow thee Whithersoever thou walkest forth to lead, And thence through seas
and mountains and swift streams, Through leafy homes of birds and greening
plains, Kindling the lure of love in every breast, Thou bringest the eternal
generations forth, Kind after kind. And since ‘tis thou alone Guidest the
Cosmos, and without thee naught Is risen to reach the shining shores of light,
Nor aught of joyful or of lovely born, Thee do I crave co-partner in that
verse Which I presume on Nature to compose For Memmius mine, whom thou hast
willed to be Peerless in every grace at every hour-Wherefore indeed, Divine
one, give my words Immortal charm. Lull to a timely rest O’er sea and land
the savage works of war, For thou alone hast power with public peace To aid
mortality; since he who rules The savage works of battle, puissant Mars, How
often to thy bosom flings his strength O’ermastered by the eternal wound of
love-And there, with eyes and full throat backward thrown, Gazing, my Goddess,
open-mouthed at thee, Pastures on love his greedy sight, his breath Hanging
upon thy lips. Him thus reclined Fill with thy holy body, round, above!
Pour
from those lips soft syllables to win Peace for the Romans, glorious Lady,
peace!
For
in a season troublous to the state
Neither
may I attend this task of mine
With
thought untroubled, nor mid such events The illustrious scion of the Memmian
house Neglect the civic cause.
Whilst
human kind Throughout the lands lay miserably crushed Before all eyes beneath
Religion- who Would show her head along the region skies, Glowering on mortals
with her hideous face-A Greek it was who first opposing dared Raise mortal
eyes that terror to withstand, Whom nor the fame of Gods nor lightning’s
stroke Nor threatening thunder of the ominous sky Abashed; but rather chafed
to angry zest His dauntless heart to be the first to rend The crossbars at the
gates of Nature old. And thus his
will and hardy wisdom won;
And
forward thus he fared afar, beyond The flaming ramparts of the world, until He
wandered the unmeasurable All.
Whence
he to us, a conqueror, reports What things can rise to being, what cannot, And
by what law to each its scope prescribed, Its boundary stone that clings so
deep in Time. Wherefore Religion
now is under foot, And us his victory now exalts to heaven.
I
know how hard it is in Latian verse To tell the dark discoveries of the
Greeks, Chiefly because our pauper-speech must find Strange terms to fit the
strangeness of the thing;
Yet
worth of thine and the expected joy Of thy sweet friendship do persuade me on
To bear all toil and wake the clear nights through, Seeking with what of words
and what of song I may at last most gloriously uncloud For thee the light
beyond, wherewith to view The core of being at the centre hid.
And
for the rest, summon to judgments true, Unbusied ears and singleness of mind
Withdrawn from cares; lest these my gifts, arranged For thee with eager
service, thou disdain Before thou comprehendest: since for thee I prove the
supreme law of Gods and sky, And the primordial germs of things unfold, Whence
Nature all creates, and multiplies And fosters all, and whither she resolves
Each in the end when each is overthrown.
This ultimate stock we have devised to name Procreant atoms, matter,
seeds of things, Or primal bodies, as primal to the world.
I
fear perhaps thou deemest that we fare An impious road to realms of thought
profane;
But
‘tis that same religion oftener far Hath bred the foul impieties of men:
As
once at Aulis, the elected chiefs, Foremost of heroes, Danaan counsellors,
Defiled Diana’s altar, virgin queen, With Agamemnon’s daughter, foully
slain. She felt the chaplet round
her maiden locks And fillets, fluttering down on either cheek, And at the
altar marked her grieving sire, The priests beside him who concealed the
knife, And all the folk in tears at sight of her.
With
a dumb terror and a sinking knee
She
dropped; nor might avail her now that first ‘Twas she who gave the king a
father’s name.
They
raised her up, they bore the trembling girl
On
to the altar- hither led not now
With
solemn rites and hymeneal choir,
But
sinless woman, sinfully foredone,
A
parent felled her on her bridal day,
Making
his child a sacrificial beast
To
give the ships auspicious winds for Troy:
Such
are the crimes to which Religion leads.
And
there shall come the time when even thou, Forced by the soothsayer’s
terror-tales, shalt seek To break from us. Ah, many a dream even now Can they
concoct to rout thy plans of life, And trouble all thy fortunes with base
fears. I own with reason: for, if
men but knew Some fixed end to ills, they would be strong By some device
unconquered to withstand Religions and the menacings of seers.
But
now nor skill nor instrument is theirs, Since men must dread eternal pains in
death. For what the soul may be
they do not know, Whether ‘tis born, or enter in at birth, And whether,
snatched by death, it die with us, Or visit the shadows and the vasty caves Of
Orcus, or by some divine decree Enter the brute herds, as our Ennius sang, Who
first from lovely Helicon brought down A laurel wreath of bright perennial
leaves, Renowned forever among the Italian clans.
Yet Ennius too in everlasting verse Proclaims those vaults of Acheron
to be, Though thence, he said, nor souls nor bodies fare, But only phantom
figures, strangely wan, And tells how once from out those regions rose Old
Homer’s ghost to him and shed salt tears And with his words unfolded Nature’s
source. Then be it ours with
steady mind to clasp The purport of the skies- the law behind The wandering
courses of the sun and moon;
To
scan the powers that speed all life below;
But
most to see with reasonable eyes
Of
what the mind, of what the soul is made,
And
what it is so terrible that breaks
On
us asleep, or waking in disease,
Until
we seem to mark and hear at hand
Dead
men whose bones earth bosomed long ago.
SUBSTANCE
IS ETERNAL
This
terror, then, this darkness of the mind, Not sunrise with its flaring spokes
of light, Nor glittering arrows of morning can disperse, But only Nature’s
aspect and her law, Which, teaching us, hath this exordium:
Nothing
from nothing ever yet was born.
Fear
holds dominion over mortality
Only
because, seeing in land and sky
So
much the cause whereof no wise they know, Men think Divinities are working
there. Meantime, when once we
know from nothing still Nothing can be create, we shall divine More clearly
what we seek: those elements From which alone all things created are, And how
accomplished by no tool of Gods. Suppose
all sprang from all things: any kind Might take its origin from any thing, No
fixed seed required. Men from the sea Might rise, and from the land the scaly
breed, And, fowl full fledged come bursting from the sky;
The
horned cattle, the herds and all the wild Would haunt with varying offspring
tilth and waste;
Nor
would the same fruits keep their olden trees, But each might grow from any
stock or limb By chance and change. Indeed, and were there not For each its
procreant atoms, could things have Each its unalterable mother old?
But,
since produced from fixed seeds are all, Each birth goes forth upon the shores
of light From its own stuff, from its own primal bodies.
And all from all cannot become, because In each resides a secret power
its own. Again, why see we
lavished o’er the lands At spring the rose, at summer heat the corn, The
vines that mellow when the autumn lures, If not because the fixed seeds of
things At their own season must together stream, And new creations only be
revealed When the due times arrive and pregnant earth Safely may give unto the
shores of light Her tender progenies? But if from naught Were their becoming,
they would spring abroad Suddenly, unforeseen, in alien months, With no
primordial germs, to be preserved From procreant unions at an adverse hour.
Nor on the mingling of the living seeds Would space be needed for the
growth of things Were life an increment of nothing: then The tiny babe
forthwith would walk a man, And from the turf would leap a branching
tree-Wonders unheard of; for, by Nature, each Slowly increases from its lawful
seed, And through that increase shall conserve its kind.
Whence take the proof that things enlarge and feed From out their
proper matter. Thus it comes That earth, without her seasons of fixed rains,
Could bear no produce such as makes us glad, And whatsoever lives, if shut
from food, Prolongs its kind and guards its life no more.
Thus easier ‘tis to hold that many things Have primal bodies in
common (as we see The single letters common to many words) Than aught exists
without its origins.
Moreover,
why should Nature not prepare Men of a bulk to ford the seas afoot, Or rend
the mighty mountains with their hands, Or conquer Time with length of days, if
not Because for all begotten things abides The changeless stuff, and what from
that may spring Is fixed forevermore? Lastly we see How far the tilled surpass
the fields untilled And to the labour of our hands return Their more abounding
crops; there are indeed Within the earth primordial germs of things, Which, as
the ploughshare turns the fruitful clods And kneads the mould, we quicken into
birth. Else would ye mark,
without all toil of ours, Spontaneous generations, fairer forms.
Confess
then, naught from nothing can become, Since all must have their seeds,
wherefrom to grow, Wherefrom to reach the gentle fields of air.
Hence too it comes that Nature all dissolves Into their primal bodies
again, and naught Perishes ever to annihilation.
For,
were aught mortal in its every part, Before our eyes it might be snatched away
Unto destruction; since no force were needed To sunder its members and undo
its bands. Whereas, of truth,
because all things exist, With seed imperishable, Nature allows Destruction
nor collapse of aught, until Some outward force may shatter by a blow, Or
inward craft, entering its hollow cells, Dissolve it down. And more than this,
if Time, That wastes with eld the works along the world, Destroy entire,
consuming matter all, Whence then may Venus back to light of life Restore the
generations kind by kind?
Or
how, when thus restored, may daedal Earth Foster and plenish with her ancient
food, Which, kind by kind, she offers unto each?
Whence may the water-springs, beneath the sea, Or inland rivers, far
and wide away, Keep the unfathomable ocean full?
And
out of what does Ether feed the stars? For
lapsed years and infinite age must else Have eat all shapes of mortal stock
away:
But
be it the Long Ago contained those germs, By which this sum of things
recruited lives, Those same infallibly can never die, Nor nothing to nothing
evermore return.
And,
too, the selfsame power might end alike
All
things, were they not still together held
By
matter eternal, shackled through its parts,
Now
more, now less. A touch might be enough
To
cause destruction. For the slightest force
Would
loose the weft of things wherein no part
Were
of imperishable stock. But now
Because
the fastenings of primordial parts
Are
put together diversely and stuff
Is
everlasting, things abide the same
Unhurt
and sure, until some power comes on Strong to destroy the warp and woof of
each:
Nothing
returns to naught; but all return At their collapse to primal forms of stuff.
Lo, the rains perish which Ether-father throws Down to the bosom of
Earth-mother; but then Upsprings the shining grain, and boughs are green Amid
the trees, and trees themselves wax big And lade themselves with fruits; and
hence in turn The race of man and all the wild are fed;
Hence
joyful cities thrive with boys and girls;
And
leafy woodlands echo with new birds;
Hence
cattle, fat and drowsy, lay their bulk Along the joyous pastures whilst the
drops Of white ooze trickle from distended bags;
Hence
the young scamper on their weakling joints Along the tender herbs, fresh
hearts afrisk With warm new milk. Thus naught of what so seems Perishes
utterly, since Nature ever Upbuilds one thing from other, suffering naught To
come to birth but through some other’s death.
. .
. .
. .
And
now, since I have taught that things cannot Be born from nothing, nor the
same, when born, To nothing be recalled, doubt not my words, Because our eyes
no primal germs perceive;
For
mark those bodies which, though known to be In this our world, are yet
invisible:
The
winds infuriate lash our face and frame, Unseen, and swamp huge ships and rend
the clouds, Or, eddying wildly down, bestrew the plains With mighty trees, or
scour the mountain tops With forest-crackling blasts. Thus on they rave With
uproar shrill and ominous moan. The winds, ‘Tis clear, are sightless bodies
sweeping through The sea, the lands, the clouds along the sky, Vexing and
whirling and seizing all amain;
And
forth they flow and pile destruction round, Even as the water’s soft and
supple bulk Becoming a river of abounding floods, Which a wide downpour from
the lofty hills Swells with big showers, dashes headlong down Fragments of
woodland and whole branching trees;
Nor
can the solid bridges bide the shock As on the waters whelm: the turbulent
stream, Strong with a hundred rains, beats round the piers, Crashes with
havoc, and rolls beneath its waves Down-toppled masonry and ponderous stone,
Hurling away whatever would oppose.
Even
so must move the blasts of all the winds, Which, when they spread, like to a
mighty flood, Hither or thither, drive things on before And hurl to ground
with still renewed assault, Or sometimes in their circling vortex seize And
bear in cones of whirlwind down the world:
The
winds are sightless bodies and naught else-Since both in works and ways they
rival well The mighty rivers, the visible in form. Then too we know the varied smells of things Yet never to our
nostrils see them come;
With
eyes we view not burning heats, nor cold, Nor are we wont men’s voices to
behold. Yet these must be
corporeal at the base, Since thus they smite the senses: naught there is Save
body, having property of touch.
And
raiment, hung by surf-beat shore, grows moist, The same, spread out before the
sun, will dry;
Yet
no one saw how sank the moisture in, Nor how by heat off-driven. Thus we know,
That moisture is dispersed about in bits Too small for eyes to see. Another
case:
A
ring upon the finger thins away Along the under side, with years and suns;
The
drippings from the eaves will scoop the stone;
The
hooked ploughshare, though of iron, wastes Amid the fields insidiously. We
view The rock-paved highways worn by many feet;
And
at the gates the brazen statues show Their right hands leaner from the
frequent touch Of wayfarers innumerable who greet.
We
see how wearing-down hath minished these, But just what motes depart at any
time, The envious nature of vision bars our sight.
Lastly
whatever days and nature add
Little
by little, constraining things to grow In due proportion, no gaze however keen
Of these our eyes hath watched and known. No more Can we observe what’s lost
at any time, When things wax old with eld and foul decay, Or when salt seas
eat under beetling crags. Thus
Nature ever by unseen bodies works.
THE
VOID
But
yet creation’s neither crammed nor blocked About by body: there’s in
things a void-Which to have known will serve thee many a turn, Nor will not
leave thee wandering in doubt, Forever searching in the sum of all, And losing
faith in these pronouncements mine. There’s
place intangible, a void and room.
For
were it not, things could in nowise move;
Since
body’s property to block and check Would work on all and at an times the
same. Thus naught could evermore
push forth and go, Since naught elsewhere would yield a starting place.
But now through oceans, lands, and heights of heaven, By divers causes
and in divers modes, Before our eyes we mark how much may move, Which, finding
not a void, would fail deprived Of stir and motion; nay, would then have been
Nowise begot at all, since matter, then, Had staid at rest, its parts together
crammed. Then too, however solid
objects seem, They yet are formed of matter mixed with void:
In
rocks and caves the watery moisture seeps, And beady drops stand out like
plenteous tears;
And
food finds way through every frame that lives;
The
trees increase and yield the season’s fruit Because their food throughout
the whole is poured, Even from the deepest roots, through trunks and boughs;
And
voices pass the solid walls and fly Reverberant through shut doorways of a
house;
And
stiffening frost seeps inward to our bones.
Which but for voids for bodies to go through ‘Tis clear could happen
in nowise at all. Again, why see
we among objects some Of heavier weight, but of no bulkier size?
Indeed,
if in a ball of wool there be
As
much of body as in lump of lead,
The
two should weigh alike, since body tends To load things downward, while the
void abides, By contrary nature, the imponderable.
Therefore,
an object just as large but lighter Declares infallibly its more of void;
Even
as the heavier more of matter shows, And how much less of vacant room inside.
That which we’re seeking with sagacious quest Exists, infallibly,
commixed with things-The void, the invisible inane.
Right
here I am compelled a question to expound, Forestalling something certain folk
suppose, Lest it avail to lead thee off from truth:
Waters
(they say) before the shining breed Of the swift scaly creatures somehow give,
And straightway open sudden liquid paths, Because the fishes leave behind them
room To which at once the yielding billows stream.
Thus things among themselves can yet be moved, And change their place,
however full the Sum-Received opinion, wholly false forsooth.
For where can scaly creatures forward dart, Save where the waters give
them room? Again, Where can the billows yield a way, so long As ever the fish
are powerless to go?
Thus
either all bodies of motion are deprived, Or things contain admixture of a
void Where each thing gets its start in moving on.
Lastly,
where after impact two broad bodies Suddenly spring apart, the air must crowd
The whole new void between those bodies formed;
But
air, however it stream with hastening gusts, Can yet not fill the gap at once-
for first It makes for one place, ere diffused through all.
And then, if haply any think this comes, When bodies spring apart,
because the air Somehow condenses, wander they from truth:
For
then a void is formed, where none before;
And,
too, a void is filled which was before.
Nor
can air be condensed in such a wise;
Nor,
granting it could, without a void, I hold, It still could not contract upon
itself And draw its parts together into one.
Wherefore,
despite demur and counter-speech, Confess thou must there is a void in things.
And
still I might by many an argument Here scrape together credence for my words.
But for the keen eye these mere footprints serve, Whereby thou mayest
know the rest thyself. As dogs full oft with noses on the ground, Find out the
silent lairs, though hid in brush, Of beasts, the mountain-rangers, when but
once They scent the certain footsteps of the way, Thus thou thyself in themes
like these alone Can hunt from thought to thought, and keenly wind Along even
onward to the secret places And drag out truth. But, if thou loiter loth Or
veer, however little, from the point, This I can promise, Memmius, for a fact:
Such
copious drafts my singing tongue shall pour From the large well-springs of my
plenished breast That much I dread slow age will steal and coil Along our
members, and unloose the gates Of life within us, ere for thee my verse Hath
put within thine ears the stores of proofs At hand for one soever question
broached.
NOTHING
EXISTS per se EXCEPT ATOMS AND THE VOID
But,
now again to weave the tale begun, All nature, then, as self-sustained,
consists Of twain of things: of bodies and of void In which they’re set, and
where they’re moved around. For
common instinct of our race declares That body of itself exists: unless This
primal faith, deep-founded, fail us not, Naught will there be whereunto to
appeal On things occult when seeking aught to prove By reasonings of mind.
Again, without That place and room, which we do call the inane, Nowhere could
bodies then be set, nor go Hither or thither at all- as shown before.
Besides, there’s naught of which thou canst declare It lives
disjoined from body, shut from void-A kind of third in nature. For whatever
Exists must be a somewhat; and the same, If tangible, however fight and
slight, Will yet increase the count of body’s sum, With its own augmentation
big or small;
But,
if intangible and powerless ever To keep a thing from passing through itself
On any side, ‘twill be naught else but that Which we do call the empty, the
inane.
Again,
whate’er exists, as of itself, Must either act or suffer action on it, Or
else be that wherein things move and be:
Naught,
saving body, acts, is acted on;
Naught
but the inane can furnish room. And thus,
Beside
the inane and bodies, is no third
Nature
amid the number of all things-
Remainder
none to fall at any time
Under
our senses, nor be seized and seen By any man through reasonings of mind.
Name
o’er creation with what names thou wilt, Thou’lt find but properties of
those first twain, Or see but accidents those twain produce.
A
property is that which not at all Can be disjoined and severed from a thing
Without a fatal dissolution: such, Weight to the rocks, heat to the fire, and
flow To the wide waters, touch to corporal things, Intangibility to the
viewless void.
But
state of slavery, pauperhood, and wealth, Freedom, and war, and concord, and
all else Which come and go whilst nature stands the same, We’re wont, and
rightly, to call accidents. Even
time exists not of itself; but sense Reads out of things what happened long
ago, What presses now, and what shall follow after:
No
man, we must admit, feels time itself, Disjoined from motion and repose of
things. Thus, when they say there
“is” the ravishment Of Princess Helen, “is” the siege and sack Of
Trojan Town, look out, they force us not To admit these acts existent by
themselves, Merely because those races of mankind (Of whom these acts were
accidents) long since Irrevocable age has borne away:
For
all past actions may be said to be But accidents, in one way, of mankind,-In
other, of some region of the world.
Add,
too, had been no matter, and no room Wherein all things go on, the fire of
love Upblown by that fair form, the glowing coal Under the Phrygian Alexander’s
breast, Had ne’er enkindled that renowned strife Of savage war, nor had the
wooden horse Involved in flames old Pergama, by a birth At midnight of a brood
of the Hellenes. And thus thou
canst remark that every act At bottom exists not of itself, nor is As body is,
nor has like name with void;
But
rather of sort more fitly to be called An accident of body, and of place
Wherein all things go on.
CHARACTER
OF THE ATOMS
Bodies,
again, Are partly primal germs of things, and partly Unions deriving from the
primal germs.
And
those which are the primal germs of things No power can quench; for in the end
they conquer By their own solidness; though hard it be To think that aught in
things has solid frame;
For
lightnings pass, no less than voice and shout, Through hedging walls of
houses, and the iron White-dazzles in the fire, and rocks will burn With
exhalations fierce and burst asunder. Totters
the rigid gold dissolved in heat;
The
ice of bronze melts conquered in the flame;
Warmth
and the piercing cold through silver seep, Since, with the cups held rightly
in the hand, We oft feel both, as from above is poured The dew of waters
between their shining sides:
So
true it is no solid form is found.
But
yet because true reason and nature of things
Constrain
us, come, whilst in few verses now
I
disentangle how there still exist
Bodies
of solid, everlasting frame-
The
seeds of things, the primal germs we teach, Whence all creation around us came
to be. First since we know a
twofold nature exists, Of things, both twain and utterly unlike-Body, and
place in which an things go on-Then each must be both for and through itself,
And all unmixed: where’er be empty space, There body’s not; and so where
body bides, There not at all exists the void inane.
Thus primal bodies are solid, without a void.
But since there’s void in all begotten things, All solid matter must
be round the same;
Nor,
by true reason canst thou prove aught hides And holds a void within its body,
unless Thou grant what holds it be a solid. Know, That which can hold a void
of things within Can be naught else than matter in union knit. Thus matter, consisting of a solid frame, Hath power to be
eternal, though all else, Though all creation, be dissolved away.
Again, were naught of empty and inane, The world were then a solid; as,
without Some certain bodies to fill the places held, The world that is were
but a vacant void.
And
so, infallibly, alternate-wise
Body
and void are still distinguished,
Since
nature knows no wholly full nor void. There
are, then, certain bodies, possessed of power To vary forever the empty and
the full;
And
these can nor be sundered from without By beats and blows, nor from within be
torn By penetration, nor be overthrown By any assault soever through the
world-For without void, naught can be crushed, it seems, Nor broken, nor
severed by a cut in twain, Nor can it take the damp, or seeping cold Or
piercing fire, those old destroyers three;
But
the more void within a thing, the more Entirely it totters at their sure
assault. Thus if first bodies be,
as I have taught, Solid, without a void, they must be then Eternal; and, if
matter ne’er had been Eternal, long ere now had all things gone Back into
nothing utterly, and all We see around from nothing had been born-But since I
taught above that naught can be From naught created, nor the once begotten To
naught be summoned back, these primal germs Must have an immortality of frame.
And
into these must each thing be resolved, When comes its supreme hour, that thus
there be At hand the stuff for plenishing the world.
. .
. .
. .
So
primal germs have solid singleness Nor otherwise could they have been
conserved Through aeons and infinity of time For the replenishment of wasted
worlds. Once more, if nature had
given a scope for things To be forever broken more and more, By now the bodies
of matter would have been So far reduced by breakings in old days That from
them nothing could, at season fixed, Be born, and arrive its prime and top of
life. For, lo, each thing is
quicker marred than made;
And
so whate’er the long infinitude Of days and all fore-passed time would now
By this have broken and ruined and dissolved, That same could ne’er in all
remaining time Be builded up for plenishing the world.
But
mark: infallibly a fixed bound
Remaineth
stablished ‘gainst their breaking down;
Since
we behold each thing soever renewed, And unto all, their seasons, after their
kind, Wherein they arrive the flower of their age.
Again,
if bounds have not been set against The breaking down of this corporeal world,
Yet must all bodies of whatever things Have still endured from everlasting
time Unto this present, as not yet assailed By shocks of peril. But because
the same Are, to thy thinking, of a nature frail, It ill accords that thus
they could remain (As thus they do) through everlasting time, Vexed through
the ages (as indeed they are) By the innumerable blows of chance.
So
in our programme of creation, mark How ‘tis that, though the bodies of all
stuff Are solid to the core, we yet explain The ways whereby some things are
fashioned soft-Air, water, earth, and fiery exhalations-And by what force they
function and go on:
The
fact is founded in the void of things. But
if the primal germs themselves be soft, Reason cannot be brought to bear to
show The ways whereby may be created these Great crags of basalt and the
during iron;
For
their whole nature will profoundly lack The first foundations of a solid
frame.
But
powerful in old simplicity,
Abide
the solid, the primeval germs;
And
by their combinations more condensed, All objects can be tightly knit and
bound And made to show unconquerable strength.
Again, since all things kind by kind obtain Fixed bounds of growing and
conserving life;
Since
Nature hath inviolably decreed What each can do, what each can never do;
Since
naught is changed, but all things so abide That ever the variegated birds
reveal The spots or stripes peculiar to their kind, Spring after spring: thus
surely all that is Must be composed of matter immutable.
For
if the primal germs in any wise
Were
open to conquest and to change, ‘twould be Uncertain also what could come to
birth And what could not, and by what law to each Its scope prescribed, its
boundary stone that clings So deep in Time. Nor could the generations Kind
after kind so often reproduce The nature, habits, motions, ways of life, Of
their progenitors.
And
then again,
Since
there is ever an extreme bounding point
. .
. .
. .
Of
that first body which our senses now
Cannot
perceive: That bounding point indeed
Exists
without all parts, a minimum
Of
nature, nor was e’er a thing apart,
As
of itself,- nor shall hereafter be,
Since
‘tis itself still parcel of another, A first and single part, whence other
parts And others similar in order lie In a packed phalanx, filling to the full
The nature of first body: being thus Not self-existent, they must cleave to
that From which in nowise they can sundered be.
So primal germs have solid singleness, Which tightly packed and closely
joined cohere By virtue of their minim particles-No compound by mere union of
the same;
But
strong in their eternal singleness, Nature, reserving them as seeds for
things, Permitteth naught of rupture or decrease.
Moreover,
were there not a minimum, The smallest bodies would have infinites, Since then
a half-of-half could still be halved, With limitless division less and less.
Then
what the difference ‘twixt the sum and least?
None: for however infinite the sum, Yet even the smallest would consist
the same Of infinite parts. But since true reason here Protests, denying that
the mind can think it, Convinced thou must confess such things there are As
have no parts, the minimums of nature. And
since these are, likewise confess thou must That primal bodies are solid and
eterne. Again, if Nature,
creatress of all things, Were wont to force all things to be resolved Unto
least parts, then would she not avail To reproduce from out them anything;
Because
whate’er is not endowed with parts Cannot possess those properties required
Of generative stuff- divers connections, Weights, blows, encounters, motions,
whereby things Forevermore have being and go on.
CONFUTATION
OF OTHER PHILOSOPHERS
And
on such grounds it is that those who held The stuff of things is fire, and out
of fire Alone the cosmic sum is formed, are seen Mightily from true reason to
have lapsed. Of whom, chief
leader to do battle, comes That Heraclitus, famous for dark speech Among the
silly, not the serious Greeks Who search for truth. For dolts are ever prone
That to bewonder and adore which hides Beneath distorted words, holding that
true Which sweetly tickles in their stupid ears, Or which is rouged in finely
finished phrase. For how, I ask,
can things so varied be, If formed of fire, single and pure? No whit ‘Twould
help for fire to be condensed or thinned, If all the parts of fire did still
preserve But fire’s own nature, seen before in gross.
The heat were keener with the parts compressed, Milder, again, when
severed or dispersed-And more than this thou canst conceive of naught That
from such causes could become; much less Might earth’s variety of things be
born From any fires soever, dense or rare.
This
too: if they suppose a void in things, Then fires can be condensed and still
left rare;
But
since they see such opposites of thought Rising against them, and are loath to
leave An unmixed void in things, they fear the steep And lose the road of
truth. Nor do they see, That, if from things we take away the void, All things
are then condensed, and out of all One body made, which has no power to dart
Swiftly from out itself not anything-As throws the fire its light and warmth
around, Giving thee proof its parts are not compact.
But if perhaps they think, in other wise, Fires through their
combinations can be quenched And change their substance, very well: behold, If
fire shall spare to do so in no part, Then heat will perish utterly and all,
And out of nothing would the world be formed.
For change in anything from out its bounds Means instant death of that
which was before;
And
thus a somewhat must persist unharmed Amid the world, lest all return to
naught, And, born from naught, abundance thrive anew.
Now since indeed there are those surest bodies Which keep their nature
evermore the same, Upon whose going out and coming in And changed order things
their nature change, And all corporeal substances transformed, ‘Tis thine to
know those primal bodies, then, Are not of fire. For ‘twere of no avail
Should some depart and go away, and some Be added new, and some be changed in
order, If still all kept their nature of old heat:
For
whatsoever they created then
Would
still in any case be only fire.
The
truth, I fancy, this: bodies there are Whose clashings, motions, order,
posture, shapes Produce the fire and which, by order changed, Do change the
nature of the thing produced, And are thereafter nothing like to fire Nor
whatso else has power to send its bodies With impact touching on the senses’
touch.
Again,
to say that all things are but fire And no true thing in number of all things
Exists but fire, as this same fellow says, Seems crazed folly. For the man
himself Against the senses by the senses fights, And hews at that through
which is all belief, Through which indeed unto himself is known The thing he
calls the fire. For, though he thinks The senses truly can perceive the fire,
He thinks they cannot as regards all else, Which still are palpably as clear
to sense-To me a thought inept and crazy too.
For
whither shall we make appeal? for what More certain than our senses can there
be Whereby to mark asunder error and truth?
Besides,
why rather do away with all,
And
wish to allow heat only, then deny
The
fire and still allow all else to be?-Alike the madness either way it seems.
Thus
whosoe’er have held the stuff of things
To
be but fire, and out of fire the sum,
And
whosoever have constituted air
As
first beginning of begotten things,
And
all whoever have held that of itself
Water
alone contrives things, or that earth
Createth
all and changes things anew
To
divers natures, mightily they seem
A
long way to have wandered from the truth.
Add,
too, whoever make the primal stuff Twofold, by joining air to fire, and earth
To water; add who deem that things can grow Out of the four- fire, earth, and
breath, and rain;
As
first Empedocles of Acragas,
Whom
that three-cornered isle of all the lands Bore on her coasts, around which
flows and flows In mighty bend and bay the Ionic seas, Splashing the brine
from off their gray-green waves. Here,
billowing onward through the narrow straits, Swift ocean cuts her boundaries
from the shores Of the Italic mainland. Here the waste Charybdis; and here
Aetna rumbles threats To gather anew such furies of its flames As with its
force anew to vomit fires, Belched from its throat, and skyward bear anew Its
lightnings’ flash. And though for much she seem The mighty and the wondrous
isle to men, Most rich in all good things, and fortified With generous
strength of heroes, she hath ne’er Possessed within her aught of more
renown, Nor aught more holy, wonderful, and dear Than this true man. Nay, ever
so far and pure The lofty music of his breast divine Lifts up its voice and
tells of glories found, That scarce he seems of human stock create.
Yet
he and those forementioned (known to be So far beneath him, less than he in
all), Though, as discoverers of much goodly truth, They gave, as ‘twere from
out of the heart’s own shrine, Responses holier and soundlier based Than
ever the Pythia pronounced for men From out the triped and the Delphian
laurel, Have still in matter of first-elements Made ruin of themselves, and,
great men, great Indeed and heavy there for them the fall:
First,
because, banishing the void from things, They yet assign them motion, and
allow Things soft and loosely textured to exist, As air, dew, fire, earth,
animals, and grains, Without admixture of void amid their frame.
Next, because, thinking there can be no end In cutting bodies down to
less and less Nor pause established to their breaking up, They hold there is
no minimum in things;
Albeit
we see the boundary point of aught Is that which to our senses seems its
least, Whereby thou mayst conjecture, that, because The things thou canst not
mark have boundary points, They surely have their minimums. Then, too, Since
these philosophers ascribe to things Soft primal germs, which we behold to be
Of birth and body mortal, thus, throughout, The sum of things must be returned
to naught, And, born from naught, abundance thrive anew-Thou seest how far
each doctrine stands from truth. And,
next, these bodies are among themselves In many ways poisons and foes to each,
Wherefore their congress will destroy them quite Or drive asunder as we see in
storms Rains, winds, and lightnings all asunder fly.
Thus
too, if all things are create of four, And all again dissolved into the four,
How can the four be called the primal germs Of things, more than all things
themselves be thought, By retroversion, primal germs of them?
For
ever alternately are both begot,
With
interchange of nature and aspect
From
immemorial time. But if percase
Thou
think’st the frame of fire and earth, the air, The dew of water can in such
wise meet As not by mingling to resign their nature, From them for thee no
world can be create-No thing of breath, no stock or stalk of tree:
In
the wild congress of this varied heap Each thing its proper nature will
display, And air will palpably be seen mixed up With earth together,
unquenched heat with water.
But
primal germs in bringing things to birth
Must
have a latent, unseen quality,
Lest
some outstanding alien element
Confuse
and minish in the thing create
Its
proper being.
But
these men begin From heaven, and from its fires; and first they feign That
fire will turn into the winds of air, Next, that from air the rain begotten
is, And earth created out of rain, and then That all, reversely, are returned
from earth-The moisture first, then air thereafter heat-And that these same ne’er
cease in interchange, To go their ways from heaven to earth, from earth Unto
the stars of the aethereal world-Which in no wise at all the germs can do.
Since an immutable somewhat still must be, Lest all things utterly be
sped to naught;
For
change in anything from out its bounds Means instant death of that which was
before. Wherefore, since those
things, mentioned heretofore, Suffer a changed state, they must derive From
others ever unconvertible, Lest an things utterly return to naught.
Then why not rather presuppose there be Bodies with such a nature
furnished forth That, if perchance they have created fire, Can still (by
virtue of a few withdrawn, Or added few, and motion and order changed) Fashion
the winds of air, and thus all things Forevermore be interchanged with all?
“But
facts in proof are manifest,” thou sayest, “That all things grow into the
winds of air And forth from earth are nourished, and unless The season favour
at propitious hour With rains enough to set the trees a-reel Under the soak of
bulking thunderheads, And sun, for its share, foster and give heat, No grains,
nor trees, nor breathing things can grow.” True- and unless hard food and
moisture soft Recruited man, his frame would waste away, And life dissolve
from out his thews and bones;
For
out of doubt recruited and fed are we By certain things, as other things by
others. Because in many ways the
many germs Common to many things are mixed in things, No wonder ‘tis that
therefore divers things By divers things are nourished. And, again, Often it
matters vastly with what others, In what positions the primordial germs Are
bound together, and what motions, too, They give and get among themselves; for
these Same germs do put together sky, sea, lands, Rivers, and sun, grains,
trees, and breathing things, But yet commixed they are in divers modes With
divers things, forever as they move.
Nay,
thou beholdest in our verses here
Elements
many, common to many worlds,
Albeit
thou must confess each verse, each word From one another differs both in sense
And ring of sound- so much the elements Can bring about by change of order
alone. But those which are the
primal germs of things Have power to work more combinations still, Whence
divers things can be produced in turn.
Now
let us also take for scrutiny The homeomeria of Anaxagoras, So called by
Greeks, for which our pauper-speech Yieldeth no name in the Italian tongue,
Although the thing itself is not o’erhard For explanation. First, then, when
he speaks Of this homeomeria of things, he thinks Bones to be sprung from
littlest bones minute, And from minute and littlest flesh all flesh, And blood
created out of drops of blood, Conceiving gold compact of grains of gold, And
earth concreted out of bits of earth, Fire made of fires, and water out of
waters, Feigning the like with all the rest of stuff.
Yet he concedes not any void in things, Nor any limit to cutting bodies
down.
Wherefore
to me he seems on both accounts To err no less than those we named before.
Add too: these germs he feigns are far too frail-If they be germs
primordial furnished forth With but same nature as the things themselves, And
travail and perish equally with those, And no rein curbs them from
annihilation. For which will last
against the grip and crush Under the teeth of death? the fire? the moist?
Or else the air? which then? the blood? the bones?
No one, methinks, when every thing will be At bottom as mortal as whate’er
we mark To perish by force before our gazing eyes.
But
my appeal is to the proofs above
That
things cannot fall back to naught, nor yet From naught increase. And now
again, since food Augments and nourishes the human frame, ‘Tis thine to know
our veins and blood and bones And thews are formed of particles unlike To them
in kind; or if they say all foods Are of mixed substance having in themselves
Small bodies of thews, and bones, and also veins And particles of blood, then
every food, Solid or liquid, must itself be thought As made and mixed of
things unlike in kind-Of bones, of thews, of ichor and of blood.
Again,
if all the bodies which upgrow
From
earth, are first within the earth, then earth Must be compound of alien
substances.
Which
spring and bloom abroad from out the earth.
Transfer the argument, and thou may’st use The selfsame words: if
flame and smoke and ash Still lurk unseen within the wood, the wood Must be
compound of alien substances Which spring from out the wood.
Right
here remains A certain slender means to skulk from truth, Which Anaxagoras
takes unto himself, Who holds that all things lurk commixed with all While
that one only comes to view, of which The bodies exceed in number all the
rest, And lie more close to hand and at the fore-A notion banished from true
reason far. For then ‘twere
meet that kernels of the grains Should oft, when crunched between the might of
stones, Give forth a sign of blood, or of aught else Which in our human frame
is fed; and that Rock rubbed on rock should yield a gory ooze.
Likewise the herbs ought oft to give forth drops Of sweet milk,
flavoured like the uddered sheep’s;
Indeed
we ought to find, when crumbling up
The
earthy clods, there herbs, and grains, and leaves, All sorts dispersed
minutely in the soil;
Lastly
we ought to find in cloven wood Ashes and smoke and bits of fire there hid.
But since fact teaches this is not the case, ‘Tis thine to know
things are not mixed with things Thuswise; but seeds, common to many things,
Commixed in many ways, must lurk in things.
“But
often it happens on skiey hills” thou sayest, “That neighbouring tops of
lofty trees are rubbed One against other, smote by the blustering south, Till
all ablaze with bursting flower of flame.” Good sooth- yet fire is not
ingraft in wood, But many are the seeds of heat, and when Rubbing together
they together flow, They start the conflagrations in the forests. Whereas if flame, already fashioned, lay Stored up within the
forests, then the fires Could not for any time be kept unseen, But would be
laying all the wildwood waste And burning all the boscage. Now dost see (Even
as we said a little space above)
How
mightily it matters with what others, In what positions these same primal
germs Are bound together? And what motions, too, They give and get among
themselves? how, hence, The same, if altered ‘mongst themselves, can body
Both igneous and ligneous objects forth-Precisely as these words themselves
are made By somewhat altering their elements, Although we mark with name
indeed distinct The igneous from the ligneous. Once again, If thou suppose
whatever thou beholdest, Among all visible objects, cannot be, Unless thou
feign bodies of matter endowed With a like nature,- by thy vain device For
thee will perish all the germs of things:
‘Twill
come to pass they’ll laugh aloud, like men, Shaken asunder by a spasm of
mirth, Or moisten with salty tear-drops cheeks and chins.
THE
INFINITY OF THE UNIVERSE
Now
learn of what remains! More keenly hear!
And for myself, my mind is not deceived How dark it is: But the large
hope of praise Hath strook with pointed thyrsus through my heart;
On
the same hour hath strook into my breast
Sweet
love of the Muses, wherewith now instinct,
I
wander afield, thriving in sturdy thought,
Through
unpathed haunts of the Pierides,
Trodden
by step of none before. I joy
To
come on undefiled fountains there,
To
drain them deep; I joy to pluck new flowers, To seek for this my head a signal
crown From regions where the Muses never yet Have garlanded the temples of a
man:
First,
since I teach concerning mighty things, And go right on to loose from round
the mind The tightened coils of dread religion;
Next,
since, concerning themes so dark, I frame Songs so pellucid, touching all
throughout Even with the Muses’ charm- which, as ‘twould seem, Is not
without a reasonable ground:
But
as physicians, when they seek to give Young boys the nauseous wormwood, first
do touch The brim around the cup with the sweet juice And yellow of the honey,
in order that The thoughtless age of boyhood be cajoled As far as the lips,
and meanwhile swallow down The wormwood’s bitter draught, and, though
befooled, Be yet not merely duped, but rather thus Grow strong again with
recreated health:
So
now I too (since this my doctrine seems In general somewhat woeful unto those
Who’ve had it not in hand, and since the crowd Starts back from it in
horror) have desired To expound our doctrine unto thee in song Soft-speaking
and Pierian, and, as ‘twere, To touch it with sweet honey of the Muse-If by
such method haply I might hold The mind of thee upon these lines of ours, Till
thou see through the nature of all things, And how exists the interwoven
frame.
But
since I’ve taught that bodies of matter, made
Completely
solid, hither and thither fly
Forevermore
unconquered through all time,
Now
come, and whether to the sum of them
There
be a limit or be none, for thee
Let
us unfold; likewise what has been found
To
be the wide inane, or room, or space
Wherein
all things soever do go on,
Let
us examine if it finite be
All
and entire, or reach unmeasured round And downward an illimitable profound.
Thus,
then, the All that is is limited In no one region of its onward paths, For
then ‘tmust have forever its beyond.
And
a beyond ‘tis seen can never be
For
aught, unless still further on there be
A
somewhat somewhere that may bound the same-
So
that the thing be seen still on to where
The
nature of sensation of that thing
Can
follow it no longer. Now because
Confess
we must there’s naught beside the sum, There’s no beyond, and so it lacks
all end. It matters nothing where
thou post thyself, In whatsoever regions of the same;
Even
any place a man has set him down
Still
leaves about him the unbounded all
Outward
in all directions; or, supposing
A
moment the all of space finite to be,
If
some one farthest traveller runs forth
Unto
the extreme coasts and throws ahead
A
flying spear, is’t then thy wish to think
It
goes, hurled off amain, to where ‘twas sent
And
shoots afar, or that some object there
Can
thwart and stop it? For the one or other
Thou
must admit and take. Either of which
Shuts
off escape for thee, and does compel
That
thou concede the all spreads everywhere,
Owning
no confines. Since whether there be
Aught
that may block and check it so it comes
Not
where ‘twas sent, nor lodges in its goal,
Or
whether borne along, in either view
‘Thas
started not from any end. And so
I’ll
follow on, and whereso’er thou set The extreme coasts, I’ll query, “what
becomes Thereafter of thy spear?” ‘Twill come to pass That nowhere can a
world’s-end be, and that The chance for further flight prolongs forever The
flight itself. Besides, were all the space Of the totality and sum shut in
With fixed coasts, and bounded everywhere, Then would the abundance of world’s
matter flow Together by solid weight from everywhere Still downward to the
bottom of the world, Nor aught could happen under cope of sky, Nor could there
be a sky at all or sun-Indeed, where matter all one heap would lie, By having
settled during infinite time.
But
in reality, repose is given
Unto
no bodies ‘mongst the elements,
Because
there is no bottom whereunto
They
might, as ‘twere, together flow, and where They might take up their
undisturbed abodes.
In
endless motion everything goes on
Forevermore;
out of all regions, even
Out
of the pit below, from forth the vast, Are hurtled bodies evermore supplied.
The
nature of room, the space of the abyss Is such that even the flashing
thunderbolts Can neither speed upon their courses through, Gliding across
eternal tracts of time, Nor, further, bring to pass, as on they run, That they
may bate their journeying one whit:
Such
huge abundance spreads for things around-Room off to every quarter, without
end.
Lastly,
before our very eyes is seen
Thing
to bound thing: air hedges hill from hill, And mountain walls hedge air; land
ends the sea, And sea in turn all lands; but for the All Truly is nothing
which outside may bound.
That,
too, the sum of things itself may not
Have
power to fix a measure of its own,
Great
nature guards, she who compels the void
To
bound all body, as body all the void,
Thus
rendering by these alternates the whole
An
infinite; or else the one or other,
Being
unbounded by the other, spreads,
Even
by its single nature, ne’ertheless Immeasurably forth....
Nor
sea, nor earth, nor shining vaults of sky, Nor breed of mortals, nor holy
limbs of gods Could keep their place least portion of an hour:
For,
driven apart from out its meetings fit, The stock of stuff, dissolved, would
be borne Along the illimitable inane afar, Or rather, in fact, would ne’er
have once combined And given a birth to aught, since, scattered wide, It could
not be united. For of truth Neither by counsel did the primal germs ‘Stablish
themselves, as by keen act of mind, Each in its proper place; nor did they
make, Forsooth, a compact how each germ should move;
But
since, being many and changed in many modes Along the All, they’re driven
abroad and vexed By blow on blow, even from all time of old, They thus at
last, after attempting all The kinds of motion and conjoining, come Into those
great arrangements out of which This sum of things established is create, By
which, moreover, through the mighty years, It is preserved, when once it has
been thrown Into the proper motions, bringing to pass That ever the streams
refresh the greedy main With river-waves abounding, and that earth, Lapped in
warm exhalations of the sun, Renews her broods, and that the lusty race Of
breathing creatures bears and blooms, and that The gliding fires of ether are
alive-What still the primal germs nowise could do, Unless from out the
infinite of space Could come supply of matter, whence in season They’re wont
whatever losses to repair. For as
the nature of breathing creatures wastes, Losing its body, when deprived of
food:
So
all things have to be dissolved as soon As matter, diverted by what means
soever From off its course, shall fail to be on hand.
Nor
can the blows from outward still conserve,
On
every side, whatever sum of a world
Has
been united in a whole. They can
Indeed,
by frequent beating, check a part, Till others arriving may fulfil the sum;
But
meanwhile often are they forced to spring Rebounding back, and, as they
spring, to yield, Unto those elements whence a world derives, Room and a time
for flight, permitting them To be from off the massy union borne Free and
afar. Wherefore, again, again:
Needs
must there come a many for supply;
And
also, that the blows themselves shall be Unfailing ever, must there ever be An
infinite force of matter all sides round.
And
in these problems, shrink, my Memmius, far From yielding faith to that
notorious talk:
That
all things inward to the centre press;
And
thus the nature of the world stands firm With never blows from outward, nor
can be Nowhere disparted- since all height and depth Have always inward to the
centre pressed (If thou art ready to believe that aught Itself can rest upon
itself ); or that The ponderous bodies which be under earth Do all press
upwards and do come to rest Upon the earth, in some way upside down, Like to
those images of things we see At present through the waters. They contend,
With like procedure, that all breathing things Head downward roam about, and
yet cannot Tumble from earth to realms of sky below, No more than these our
bodies wing away Spontaneously to vaults of sky above;
That,
when those creatures look upon the sun, We view the constellations of the
night;
And
that with us the seasons of the sky
They
thus alternately divide, and thus
Do
pass the night coequal to our days,
But a vain error has given these dreams to fools, Which they’ve embraced with reasoning perverse For centre none can be where world is still Boundless, nor yet, if now a centre were, Could aught take there a fixed position more Than for some other cause ‘tmight be dislodged. For all of room and space we call the void Must both through centre and non-cen