Go to Beginning of this Book |
Back to Philosopher's Page |
Table of Contents |
Fig Home |
Translated
by William Ellery Leonard
Copyright
laws are changing all over the world, be sure to check the copyright laws for
your country before posting these files!!
Please
take a look at the important information in this header.
We encourage you to keep this file on your own disk, keeping an
electronic path open for the next readers.
Do not remove this.
**Welcome
To The World of Free Plain Vanilla Electronic Texts**
**Etexts
Readable By Both Humans and By Computers, Since 1971**
These
Etexts Prepared By Hundreds of Volunteers and Donations
Information
on contacting Project Gutenberg to get Etexts, and further information is
included below. We need your
donations.
Of
The Nature of Things
by
Lucretius [Titus Lucretius Carus]
Translated
by William Ellery Leonard
January,
1997 [Etext #785]
Project
Gutenberg Etext of Of The Nature of Things by Lucretius
*****This
file should be named natng10.txt or natng10.zip******
Corrected
EDITIONS of our etexts get a new NUMBER, natng11.txt.
VERSIONS
based on separate sources get new LETTER, natng10a.txt.
We
are now trying to release all our books one month in advance of the official
release dates, for time for better editing.
Please
note: neither this list nor its
contents are final till midnight of the last day of the month of any such
announcement. The official
release date of all Project Gutenberg Etexts is at Midnight, Central Time, of
the last day of the stated month. A
preliminary version may often be posted for suggestion, comment and editing by
those who wish to do so. To be
sure you have an up to date first edition [xxxxx10x.xxx] please check file
sizes in the first week of the next month.
Since our ftp program has a bug in it that scrambles the date [tried to
fix and failed] a look at the file size will have to do, but we will try to
see a new copy has at least one byte more or less.
Information
about Project Gutenberg (one page)
We
produce about two million dollars for each hour we work.
The fifty hours is one conservative estimate for how long it we take to
get any etext selected, entered, proofread, edited, copyright searched and
analyzed, the copyright letters written, etc.
This projected audience is one hundred million readers.
If our value per text is nominally estimated at one dollar then we
produce $2 million dollars per hour this year as we release thirty-two text
files per month: or 400 more
Etexts in 1996 for a total of 800. If
these reach just 10% of the computerized population, then the total should
reach 80 billion Etexts. We will
try add 800 more, during 1997, but it will take all the effort we can manage
to do the doubling of our library again this year, what with the other massive
requirements it is going to take to get incorporated and establish something
that will have some permanence.
The
Goal of Project Gutenberg is to Give Away One Trillion Etext Files by the
December 31, 2001. [10,000 x
100,000,000=Trillion] This is ten thousand titles each to one hundred million
readers, which is only 10% of the present number of computer users.
2001 should have at least twice as many computer users as that, so it
will require us reaching less than 5% of the users in 2001.
For
these and other matters, please mail to:
Project
Gutenberg
P.
O. Box 2782
Champaign,
IL 61825
When
all other email fails try our Executive Director:
Michael
S. Hart <hart@pobox.com>
We
would prefer to send you this information by email (Internet, Bitnet,
Compuserve, ATTMAIL or MCImail).
FTP
directly to the Project Gutenberg archives:
[Mac
users, do NOT point and click. . .type]
ftp
uiarchive.cso.uiuc.edu
login:
anonymous
password:
your@login
cd
etext/etext90 through /etext97
or
cd etext/articles [get suggest gut for more information] dir [to see files]
get or mget [to get files. . .set bin for zip files]
for
a list of books
and
GET
NEW GUT for general information
and
MGET
GUT* for newsletters.
**Information
prepared by the Project Gutenberg legal advisor** (Three Pages)
***START**THE
SMALL PRINT!**FOR PUBLIC DOMAIN ETEXTS**START*** Why is this “Small Print!”
statement here? You know:
lawyers. They tell us you might
sue us if there is something wrong with your copy of this etext, even if you
got it for free from someone other than us, and even if what’s wrong is not
our fault. So, among other
things, this “Small Print!” statement disclaims most of our liability to
you. It also tells you how you can distribute copies of this etext
if you want to.
BEFORE!
YOU USE OR READ THIS ETEXT
By
using or reading any part of this PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm etext, you indicate
that you understand, agree to and accept this “Small Print!” statement.
If you do not, you can receive a refund of the money (if any) you paid
for this etext by sending a request within 30 days of receiving it to the
person you got it from. If you
received this etext on a physical medium (such as a disk), you must return it
with your request.
This
PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm etext, like most PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm etexts, is a “public
domain” work distributed by Professor Michael S. Hart through the Project
Gutenberg (the “Project”). Among
other things, this means that no one owns a United States copyright on or for
this work, so the Project (and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United
States without permission and without paying copyright royalties.
Special rules, set forth below, apply if you wish to copy and
distribute this etext under the Project’s “PROJECT GUTENBERG” trademark.
To
create these etexts, the Project expends considerable efforts to identify,
transcribe and proofread public domain works.
Despite these efforts, the Project’s etexts and any medium they may
be on may contain “Defects”. Among
other things, Defects may take the form of incomplete, inaccurate or corrupt
data, transcription errors, a copyright or other intellectual property
infringement, a defective or damaged disk or other etext medium, a computer
virus, or computer codes that damage or cannot be read by your equipment.
But
for the “Right of Replacement or Refund” described below, [1] the Project
(and any other party you may receive this etext from as a PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm
etext) disclaims all liability to you for damages, costs and expenses,
including legal fees, and [2] YOU HAVE NO REMEDIES FOR NEGLIGENCE OR UNDER
STRICT LIABILITY, OR FOR BREACH OF WARRANTY OR CONTRACT, INCLUDING BUT NOT
LIMITED TO INDIRECT, CONSEQUENTIAL, PUNITIVE OR INCIDENTAL DAMAGES, EVEN IF
YOU GIVE NOTICE OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH DAMAGES.
If
you discover a Defect in this etext within 90 days of
receiving
it, you can receive a refund of the money (if any)
you
paid for it by sending an explanatory note within that
time
to the person you received it from. If
you received it
on
a physical medium, you must return it with your note, and
such
person may choose to alternatively give you a replacement
copy.
If you received it electronically, such person may
choose to alternatively give you a second opportunity to
receive it electronically.
THIS
ETEXT IS OTHERWISE PROVIDED TO YOU “AS-IS”.
NO OTHER WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, ARE MADE TO YOU AS
TO THE ETEXT OR ANY MEDIUM IT MAY BE ON, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO
WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY OR FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.
Some
states do not allow disclaimers of implied warranties or the exclusion or
limitation of consequential damages, so the above disclaimers and exclusions
may not apply to you, and you may have other legal rights.
You
will indemnify and hold the Project, its directors, officers, members and
agents harmless from all liability, cost and expense, including legal fees,
that arise directly or indirectly from any of the following that you do or
cause:
[1]
distribution of this etext, [2] alteration, modification, or addition to the
etext, or [3] any Defect.
You
may distribute copies of this etext electronically, or by disk, book or any
other medium if you either delete this “Small Print!” and all other
references to Project Gutenberg, or:
[1]
Only give exact copies of it. Among
other things, this
requires
that you do not remove, alter or modify the etext or this “small print!”
statement. You may however, if
you wish, distribute this etext in machine readable binary, compressed,
mark-up, or proprietary form, including any form resulting from conversion by
word pro-cessing or hypertext software, but only so long as EITHER:
[*]
The etext, when displayed, is clearly readable, and
does
not contain characters other than those
intended
by the author of the work, although tilde
(~),
asterisk (*) and underline (_) characters may
be
used to convey punctuation intended by the
author,
and additional characters may be used to
indicate
hypertext links; OR
[*]
The etext may be readily converted by the reader at
no
expense into plain ASCII, EBCDIC or equivalent form by the program that
displays the etext (as is the case, for instance, with most word processors);
[*]
You provide, or agree to also provide on request at
no
additional cost, fee or expense, a copy of the etext in its original plain
ASCII form (or in EBCDIC or other equivalent proprietary form).
[2]
Honor the etext refund and replacement provisions of this
“Small
Print!” statement.
[3]
Pay a trademark license fee to the Project of 20% of the
net
profits you derive calculated using the method you already use to calculate
your applicable taxes. If you don’t
derive profits, no royalty is due. Royalties
are payable to “Project Gutenberg Association within the 60 days following
each date you prepare (or were legally required to prepare) your annual (or
equivalent periodic) tax return.
The
Project gratefully accepts contributions in money, time, scanning machines,
OCR software, public domain etexts, royalty free copyright licenses, and every
other sort of contribution you can think of.
Money should be paid to “Project Gutenberg Association”.
*END*THE
SMALL PRINT! FOR PUBLIC DOMAIN ETEXTS*Ver.04.29.93*END*
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-centre yield Alike to weights where’er their motions tend.
Nor is there any place, where, when they’ve come, Bodies can be at
standstill in the void, Deprived of force of weight; nor yet may void Furnish
support to any,- nay, it must, True to its bent of nature, still give way.
Thus in such manner not at all can things Be held in union, as if
overcome By craving for a centre.
But
besides,
Seeing
they feign that not all bodies press
To
centre inward, rather only those
Of
earth and water (liquid of the sea,
And
the big billows from the mountain slopes, And whatsoever are encased, as ‘twere,
In earthen body), contrariwise, they teach How the thin air, and with it the
hot fire, Is borne asunder from the centre, and how, For this all ether
quivers with bright stars, And the sun’s flame along the blue is fed
(Because the heat, from out the centre flying, All gathers there), and how,
again, the boughs Upon the tree-tops could not sprout their leaves, Unless,
little by little, from out the earth For each were nutriment...
. .
. .
. .
Lest,
after the manner of the winged flames, The ramparts of the world should flee
away, Dissolved amain throughout the mighty void, And lest all else should
likewise follow after, Aye, lest the thundering vaults of heaven should burst
And splinter upward, and the earth forthwith Withdraw from under our feet, and
all its bulk, Among its mingled wrecks and those of heaven, With slipping
asunder of the primal seeds, Should pass, along the immeasurable inane, Away
forever, and, that instant, naught Of wrack and remnant would be left, beside
The desolate space, and germs invisible. For
on whatever side thou deemest first The primal bodies lacking, lo, that side
Will be for things the very door of death:
Wherethrough
the throng of matter all will dash, Out and abroad.
These
points, if thou wilt ponder, Then, with but paltry trouble led along...
. .
. .
. .
For
one thing after other will grow clear, Nor shall the blind night rob thee of
the road, To hinder thy gaze on nature’s Farthest-forth. Thus things for things shall kindle torches new.
BOOK
II
PROEM
‘Tis
sweet, when, down the mighty main, the winds Roll up its waste of waters, from
the land To watch another’s labouring anguish far, Not that we joyously
delight that man Should thus be smitten, but because ‘tis sweet To mark what
evils we ourselves be spared;
‘Tis
sweet, again, to view the mighty strife Of armies embattled yonder o’er the
plains, Ourselves no sharers in the peril; but naught There is more goodly
than to hold the high Serene plateaus, well fortressed by the wise, Whence
thou may’st look below on other men And see them ev’rywhere wand’ring,
all dispersed In their lone seeking for the road of life;
Rivals
in genius, or emulous in rank,
Pressing
through days and nights with hugest toil For summits of power and mastery of
the world. O wretched minds of
men! O blinded hearts! In how
great perils, in what darks of life Are spent the human years, however
brief!-O not to see that nature for herself Barks after nothing, save that
pain keep off, Disjoined from the body, and that mind enjoy Delightsome
feeling, far from care and fear! Therefore
we see that our corporeal life Needs little, altogether, and only such As
takes the pain away, and can besides Strew underneath some number of delights.
More
grateful ‘tis at times (for nature craves
No
artifice nor luxury), if forsooth
There
be no golden images of boys
Along
the halls, with right hands holding out The lamps ablaze, the lights for
evening feasts, And if the house doth glitter not with gold Nor gleam with
silver, and to the lyre resound No fretted and gilded ceilings overhead, Yet
still to lounge with friends in the soft grass Beside a river of water,
underneath A big tree’s boughs, and merrily to refresh Our frames, with no
vast outlay- most of all If the weather is laughing and the times of the year
Besprinkle the green of the grass around with flowers.
Nor yet the quicker will hot fevers go, If on a pictured tapestry thou
toss, Or purple robe, than if ‘tis thine to lie Upon the poor man’s
bedding. Wherefore, since Treasure, nor rank, nor glory of a reign Avail us
naught for this our body, thus Reckon them likewise nothing for the mind:
Save
then perchance, when thou beholdest forth Thy legions swarming round the Field
of Mars, Rousing a mimic warfare- either side Strengthened with large
auxiliaries and horse, Alike equipped with arms, alike inspired;
Or
save when also thou beholdest forth Thy fleets to swarm, deploying down the
sea:
For
then, by such bright circumstance abashed, Religion pales and flees thy mind;
O then The fears of death leave heart so free of care. But if we note how all this pomp at last Is but a drollery and
a mocking sport, And of a truth man’s dread, with cares at heels, Dreads not
these sounds of arms, these savage swords But among kings and lords of all the
world Mingles undaunted, nor is overawed By gleam of gold nor by the splendour
bright Of purple robe, canst thou then doubt that this Is aught, but power of
thinking?- when, besides The whole of life but labours in the dark.
For just as children tremble and fear all In the viewless dark, so even
we at times Dread in the light so many things that be No whit more fearsome
than what children feign, Shuddering, will be upon them in the dark.
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.
ATOMIC
MOTIONS
Now
come: I will untangle for thy steps Now by what motions the begetting bodies
Of the world-stuff beget the varied world, And then forever resolve it when
begot, And by what force they are constrained to this, And what the speed
appointed unto them Wherewith to travel down the vast inane:
Do
thou remember to yield thee to my words.
For truly matter coheres not, crowds not tight, Since we behold each
thing to wane away, And we observe how all flows on and off, As ‘twere, with
age-old time, and from our eyes How eld withdraws each object at the end,
Albeit the sum is seen to bide the same, Unharmed, because these motes that
leave each thing Diminish what they part from, but endow With increase those
to which in turn they come, Constraining these to wither in old age, And those
to flower at the prime (and yet Biding not long among them). Thus the sum
Forever is replenished, and we live As mortals by eternal give and take.
The
nations wax, the nations wane away;
In
a brief space the generations pass, And like to runners hand the lamp of life
One unto other.
But
if thou believe That the primordial germs of things can stop, And in their
stopping give new motions birth, Afar thou wanderest from the road of truth.
For since they wander through the void inane, All the primordial germs
of things must needs Be borne along, either by weight their own, Or haply by
another’s blow without.
For,
when, in their incessancy so oft They meet and clash, it comes to pass amain
They leap asunder, face to face: not strange-Being most hard, and solid in
their weights, And naught opposing motion, from behind.
And
that more clearly thou perceive how all
These
mites of matter are darted round about,
Recall
to mind how nowhere in the sum
Of
All exists a bottom,- nowhere is
A
realm of rest for primal bodies; since (As amply shown and proved by reason
sure) Space has no bound nor measure, and extends Unmetered forth in all
directions round. Since this
stands certain, thus ‘tis out of doubt No rest is rendered to the primal
bodies Along the unfathomable inane; but rather, Inveterately plied by motions
mixed, Some, at their jamming, bound aback and leave Huge gaps between, and
some from off the blow Are hurried about with spaces small between.
And all which, brought together with slight gaps, In more condensed
union bound aback, Linked by their own all inter-tangled shapes,-These form
the irrefragable roots of rocks And the brute bulks of iron, and what else Is
of their kind...
The
rest leap far asunder, far recoil, Leaving huge gaps between: and these supply
For us thin air and splendour-lights of the sun. And many besides wander the mighty void-Cast back from unions
of existing things, Nowhere accepted in the universe, And nowise linked in
motions to the rest. And of this
fact (as I record it here)
An
image, a type goes on before our eyes Present each moment; for behold whenever
The sun’s light and the rays, let in, pour down Across dark halls of houses:
thou wilt see The many mites in many a manner mixed Amid a void in the very
light of the rays, And battling on, as in eternal strife, And in battalions
contending without halt, In meetings, partings, harried up and down.
From this thou mayest conjecture of what sort The ceaseless tossing of
primordial seeds Amid the mightier void- at least so far As small affair can
for a vaster serve, And by example put thee on the spoor Of knowledge. For
this reason too ‘tis fit Thou turn thy mind the more unto these bodies Which
here are witnessed tumbling in the light:
Namely,
because such tumblings are a sign That motions also of the primal stuff Secret
and viewless lurk beneath, behind. For
thou wilt mark here many a speck, impelled By viewless blows, to change its
little course, And beaten backwards to return again, Hither and thither in all
directions round. Lo, all their
shifting movement is of old, From the primeval atoms; for the same Primordial
seeds of things first move of self, And then those bodies built of unions
small And nearest, as it were, unto the powers Of the primeval atoms, are
stirred up By impulse of those atoms’ unseen blows, And these thereafter
goad the next in size:
Thus
motion ascends from the primevals on, And stage by stage emerges to our sense,
Until those objects also move which we Can mark in sunbeams, though it not
appears What blows do urge them.
Herein
wonder not How ‘tis that, while the seeds of things are all Moving forever,
the sum yet seems to stand Supremely still, except in cases where A thing
shows motion of its frame as whole. For
far beneath the ken of senses lies The nature of those ultimates of the world;
And
so, since those themselves thou canst not see, Their motion also must they
veil from men-For mark, indeed, how things we can see, oft Yet hide their
motions, when afar from us Along the distant landscape. Often thus, Upon a
hillside will the woolly flocks Be cropping their goodly food and creeping
about Whither the summons of the grass, begemmed With the fresh dew, is
calling, and the lambs, Well filled, are frisking, locking horns in sport:
Yet
all for us seem blurred and blent afar-A glint of white at rest on a green
hill. Again, when mighty legions,
marching round, Fill all the quarters of the plains below, Rousing a mimic
warfare, there the sheen Shoots up the sky, and all the fields about Glitter
with brass, and from beneath, a sound Goes forth from feet of stalwart
soldiery, And mountain walls, smote by the shouting, send The voices onward to
the stars of heaven, And hither and thither darts the cavalry, And of a sudden
down the midmost fields Charges with onset stout enough to rock The solid
earth: and yet some post there is Up the high mountains, viewed from which
they seem To stand- a gleam at rest along the plains.
Now
what the speed to matter’s atoms given Thou mayest in few, my Memmius, learn
from this:
When
first the dawn is sprinkling with new light
The
lands, and all the breed of birds abroad
Flit
round the trackless forests, with liquid notes
Filling
the regions along the mellow air,
We
see ‘tis forthwith manifest to man
How
suddenly the risen sun is wont
At
such an hour to overspread and clothe The whole with its own splendour; but
the sun’s Warm exhalations and this serene light Travel not down an empty
void; and thus They are compelled more slowly to advance, Whilst, as it were,
they cleave the waves of air;
Nor
one by one travel these particles
Of
the warm exhalations, but are all
Entangled
and enmassed, whereby at once Each is restrained by each, and from without
Checked, till compelled more slowly to advance.
But the primordial atoms with their old Simple solidity, when forth
they travel Along the empty void, all undelayed By aught outside them there,
and they, each one Being one unit from nature of its parts, Are borne to that
one place on which they strive Still to lay hold, must then, beyond a doubt,
Outstrip in speed, and be more swiftly borne Than light of sun, and over
regions rush, Of space much vaster, in the self-same time The sun’s
effulgence widens round the sky.
.
. .
. . .
Nor
to pursue the atoms one by one, To see the law whereby each thing goes on.
But some men, ignorant of matter, think, Opposing this, that not
without the gods, In such adjustment to our human ways, Can nature change the
seasons of the years, And bring to birth the grains and all of else To which
divine Delight, the guide of life, Persuades mortality and leads it on, That,
through her artful blandishments of love, It propagate the generations still,
Lest humankind should perish. When they feign That gods have stablished all
things but for man, They seem in all ways mightily to lapse From reason’s
truth: for ev’n if ne’er I knew What seeds primordial are, yet would I
dare This to affirm, ev’n from deep judgment based Upon the ways and conduct
of the skies-This to maintain by many a fact besides-That in no wise the
nature of the world For us was builded by a power divine-So great the faults
it stands encumbered with:
The
which, my Memmius, later on, for thee We will clear up. Now as to what remains
Concerning motions we’ll unfold our thought.
Now
is the place, meseems, in these affairs To prove for thee this too: nothing
corporeal Of its own force can e’er be upward borne, Or upward go- nor let
the bodies of flames Deceive thee here: for they engendered are With urge to
upwards, taking thus increase, Whereby grow upwards shining grains and trees,
Though all the weight within them downward bears.
Nor, when the fires will leap from under round The roofs of houses, and
swift flame laps up Timber and beam, ‘tis then to be supposed They act of
own accord, no force beneath To urge them up. ‘Tis thus that blood,
discharged From out our bodies, spurts its jets aloft And spatters gore. And
hast thou never marked With what a force the water will disgorge Timber and
beam? The deeper, straight and down, We push them in, and, many though we be,
The more we press with main and toil, the more The water vomits up and flings
them back, That, more than half their length, they there emerge, Rebounding.
Yet we never doubt, meseems, That all the weight within them downward bears
Through empty void. Well, in like manner, flames Ought also to be able, when
pressed out, Through winds of air to rise aloft, even though The weight within
them strive to draw them down. Hast
thou not seen, sweeping so far and high, The meteors, midnight flambeaus of
the sky, How after them they draw long trails of flame Wherever Nature gives a
thoroughfare?
How
stars and constellations drop to earth, Seest not? Nay, too, the sun from peak
of heaven Sheds round to every quarter its large heat, And sows the
new-ploughed intervales with light:
Thus
also sun’s heat downward tends to earth.
Athwart
the rain thou seest the lightning fly;
Now
here, now there, bursting from out the clouds, The fires dash zig-zag- and
that flaming power Falls likewise down to earth.
In
these affairs We wish thee also well aware of this:
The
atoms, as their own weight bears them down Plumb through the void, at scarce
determined times, In scarce determined places, from their course Decline a
little- call it, so to speak, Mere changed trend. For were it not their wont
Thuswise to swerve, down would they fall, each one, Like drops of rain,
through the unbottomed void;
And
then collisions ne’er could be nor blows Among the primal elements; and thus
Nature would never have created aught.
But,
if perchance be any that believe The heavier bodies, as more swiftly borne
Plumb down the void, are able from above To strike the lighter, thus
engendering blows Able to cause those procreant motions, far From highways of
true reason they retire. For
whatsoever through the waters fall, Or through thin air, must quicken their
descent, Each after its weight- on this account, because Both bulk of water
and the subtle air By no means can retard each thing alike, But give more
quick before the heavier weight;
But
contrariwise the empty void cannot, On any side, at any time, to aught Oppose
resistance, but will ever yield, True to its bent of nature. Wherefore all,
With equal speed, though equal not in weight, Must rush, borne downward
through the still inane. Thus ne’er
at all have heavier from above Been swift to strike the lighter, gendering
strokes Which cause those divers motions, by whose means Nature transacts her
work. And so I say, The atoms must a little swerve at times-But only the
least, lest we should seem to feign Motions oblique, and fact refute us there.
For
this we see forthwith is manifest:
Whatever
the weight, it can’t obliquely go, Down on its headlong journey from above,
At least so far as thou canst mark; but who Is there can mark by sense that
naught can swerve At all aside from off its road’s straight line?
Again,
if ev’r all motions are co-linked,
And
from the old ever arise the new
In
fixed order, and primordial seeds
Produce
not by their swerving some new start Of motion to sunder the covenants of
fate, That cause succeed not cause from everlasting, Whence this free will for
creatures o’er the lands, Whence is it wrested from the fates,- this will
Whereby we step right forward where desire Leads each man on, whereby the same
we swerve In motions, not as at some fixed time, Nor at some fixed line of
space, but where The mind itself has urged? For out of doubt In these affairs
‘tis each man’s will itself That gives the start, and hence throughout our
limbs Incipient motions are diffused. Again, Dost thou not see, when, at a
point of time, The bars are opened, how the eager strength Of horses cannot
forward break as soon As pants their mind to do? For it behooves That all the
stock of matter, through the frame, Be roused, in order that, through every
joint, Aroused, it press and follow mind’s desire;
So
thus thou seest initial motion’s gendered From out the heart, aye, verily,
proceeds First from the spirit’s will, whence at the last ‘Tis given forth
through joints and body entire.
Quite
otherwise it is, when forth we move,
Impelled
by a blow of another’s mighty powers
And
mighty urge; for then ‘tis clear enough
All
matter of our total body goes,
Hurried
along, against our own desire-
Until
the will has pulled upon the reins And checked it back, throughout our members
all;
At
whose arbitrament indeed sometimes
The
stock of matter’s forced to change its path, Throughout our members and
throughout our joints, And, after being forward cast, to be Reined up, whereat
it settles back again. So seest
thou not, how, though external force Drive men before, and often make them
move, Onward against desire, and headlong snatched, Yet is there something in
these breasts of ours Strong to combat, strong to withstand the
same?-Wherefore no less within the primal seeds Thou must admit, besides all
blows and weight, Some other cause of motion, whence derives This power in us
inborn, of some free act.-Since naught from nothing can become, we see. For weight prevents all things should come to pass Through
blows, as ‘twere, by some external force;
But
that man’s mind itself in all it does Hath not a fixed necessity within, Nor
is not, like a conquered thing, compelled To bear and suffer,- this state
comes to man From that slight swervement of the elements In no fixed line of
space, in no fixed time.
Nor
ever was the stock of stuff more crammed, Nor ever, again, sundered by bigger
gaps:
For
naught gives increase and naught takes away;
On
which account, just as they move to-day,
The
elemental bodies moved of old
And
shall the same hereafter evermore.
And
what was wont to be begot of old
Shall
be begotten under selfsame terms
And
grow and thrive in power, so far as given To each by Nature’s changeless,
old decrees. The sum of things
there is no power can change, For naught exists outside, to which can flee Out
of the world matter of any kind, Nor forth from which a fresh supply can
spring, Break in upon the founded world, and change Whole nature of things,
and turn their motions about.
ATOMIC
FORMS AND THEIR COMBINATIONS
Now
come, and next hereafter apprehend What sorts, how vastly different in form,
How varied in multitudinous shapes they are-These old beginnings of the
universe;
Not
in the sense that only few are furnished With one like form, but rather not at
all In general have they likeness each with each, No marvel: since the stock
of them’s so great That there’s no end (as I have taught) nor sum, They
must indeed not one and all be marked By equal outline and by shape the same.
. .
. .
. .
Moreover,
humankind, and the mute flocks Of scaly creatures swimming in the streams, And
joyous herds around, and all the wild, And all the breeds of birds- both those
that teem In gladsome regions of the water-haunts, About the river-banks and
springs and pools, And those that throng, flitting from tree to tree, Through
trackless woods- Go, take which one thou wilt, In any kind: thou wilt discover
still Each from the other still unlike in shape. Nor in no other wise could offspring know Mother, nor mother
offspring- which we see They yet can do, distinguished one from other, No less
than human beings, by clear signs. Thus
oft before fair temples of the gods, Beside the incense-burning altars slain,
Drops down the yearling calf, from out its breast Breathing warm streams of
blood; the orphaned mother, Ranging meanwhile green woodland pastures round,
Knows well the footprints, pressed by cloven hoofs, With eyes regarding every
spot about, For sight somewhere of youngling gone from her;
And,
stopping short, filleth the leafy lanes With her complaints; and oft she seeks
again Within the stall, pierced by her yearning still.
Nor tender willows, nor dew-quickened grass, Nor the loved streams that
glide along low banks, Can lure her mind and turn the sudden pain;
Nor
other shapes of calves that graze thereby Distract her mind or lighten pain
the least-So keen her search for something known and hers.
Moreover, tender kids with bleating throats Do know their horned dams,
and butting lambs The flocks of sheep, and thus they patter on, Unfailingly
each to its proper teat, As nature intends. Lastly, with any grain, Thou’lt
see that no one kernel in one kind Is so far like another, that there still Is
not in shapes some difference running through.
By
a like law we see how earth is pied
With
shells and conchs, where, with soft waves, the sea Beats on the thirsty sands
of curving shores. Wherefore
again, again, since seeds of things Exist by nature, nor were wrought with
hands After a fixed pattern of one other, They needs must flitter to and fro
with shapes In types dissimilar to one another.
. .
. .
. .
Easy
enough by thought of mind to solve Why fires of lightning more can penetrate
Than these of ours from pitch-pine born on earth.
For thou canst say lightning’s celestial fire, So subtle, is formed
of figures finer far, And passes thus through holes which this our fire, Born
from the wood, created from the pine, Cannot. Again, light passes through the
horn On the lantern’s side, while rain is dashed away.
And why?- unless those bodies of light should be Finer than those of
water’s genial showers. We see
how quickly through a colander The wines will flow; how, on the other hand,
The sluggish olive-oil delays: no doubt, Because ‘tis wrought of elements
more large, Or else more crook’d and intertangled. Thus It comes that the
primordials cannot be So suddenly sundered one from other, and seep, One
through each several hole of anything.
And
note, besides, that liquor of honey or milk Yields in the mouth agreeable
taste to tongue, Whilst nauseous wormwood, pungent centaury, With their foul
flavour set the lips awry;
Thus
simple ‘tis to see that whatsoever Can touch the senses pleasingly are made
Of smooth and rounded elements, whilst those Which seem the bitter and the
sharp, are held Entwined by elements more crook’d, and so Are wont to tear
their ways into our senses, And rend our body as they enter in.
In
short all good to sense, all bad to touch, Being up-built of figures so
unlike, Are mutually at strife- lest thou suppose That the shrill rasping of a
squeaking saw Consists of elements as smooth as song Which, waked by nimble
fingers, on the strings The sweet musicians fashion; or suppose That
same-shaped atoms through men’s nostrils pierce When foul cadavers burn, as
when the stage Is with Cilician saffron sprinkled fresh, And the altar near
exhales Panchaean scent;
Or
hold as of like seed the goodly hues
Of
things which feast our eyes, as those which sting Against the smarting pupil
and draw tears, Or show, with gruesome aspect, grim and vile.
For never a shape which charms our sense was made Without some
elemental smoothness; whilst Whate’er is harsh and irksome has been framed
Still with some roughness in its elements.
Some, too, there are which justly are supposed To be nor smooth nor
altogether hooked, With bended barbs, but slightly angled-out, To tickle
rather than to wound the sense-And of which sort is the salt tartar of wine
And flavours of the gummed elecampane.
Again,
that glowing fire and icy rime Are fanged with teeth unlike whereby to sting
Our body’s sense, the touch of each gives proof.
For
touch- by sacred majesties of Gods!-
Touch
is indeed the body’s only sense-
Be’t
that something in-from-outward works,
Be’t
that something in the body born
Wounds,
or delighteth as it passes out
Along
the procreant paths of Aphrodite;
Or
be’t the seeds by some collision whirl
Disordered
in the body and confound
By
tumult and confusion all the sense-
As
thou mayst find, if haply with the hand Thyself thou strike thy body’s any
part.
On
which account, the elemental forms
Must
differ widely, as enabled thus
To
cause diverse sensations.
And,
again, What seems to us the hardened and condensed Must be of atoms among
themselves more hooked, Be held compacted deep within, as ‘twere By
branch-like atoms- of which sort the chief Are diamond stones, despisers of
all blows, And stalwart flint and strength of solid iron, And brazen bars,
which, budging hard in locks, Do grate and scream. But what are liquid, formed
Of fluid body, they indeed must be Of elements more smooth and round- because
Their globules severally will not cohere:
To
suck the poppy-seeds from palm of hand Is quite as easy as drinking water
down, And they, once struck, roll like unto the same.
But that thou seest among the things that flow Some bitter, as the
brine of ocean is, Is not the least a marvel...
For
since ‘tis fluid, smooth its atoms are And round, with painful rough ones
mixed therein;
Yet
need not these be held together hooked:
In
fact, though rough, they’re globular besides, Able at once to roll, and rasp
the sense.
And
that the more thou mayst believe me here,
That
with smooth elements are mixed the rough
(Whence
Neptune’s salt astringent body comes),
There
is a means to separate the twain,
And
thereupon dividedly to see
How
the sweet water, after filtering through
So
often underground, flows freshened forth
Into
some hollow; for it leaves above
The
primal germs of nauseating brine,
Since
cling the rough more readily in earth. Lastly,
whatso thou markest to disperse Upon the instant- smoke, and cloud, and
flame-Must not (even though not all of smooth and round) Be yet co-linked with
atoms intertwined, That thus they can, without together cleaving, So pierce
our body and so bore the rocks. Whatever
we see...
Given
to senses, that thou must perceive They’re not from linked but pointed
elements.
The
which now having taught, I will go on To bind thereto a fact to this allied
And drawing from this its proof: these primal germs Vary, yet only with finite
tale of shapes. For were these
shapes quite infinite, some seeds Would have a body of infinite increase.
For in one seed, in one small frame of any, The shapes can’t vary
from one another much. Assume, we’ll
say, that of three minim parts Consist the primal bodies, or add a few:
When,
now, by placing all these parts of one At top and bottom, changing lefts and
rights, Thou hast with every kind of shift found out What the aspect of shape
of its whole body Each new arrangement gives, for what remains, If thou
percase wouldst vary its old shapes, New parts must then be added; follows
next, If thou percase wouldst vary still its shapes, That by like logic each
arrangement still Requires its increment of other parts.
Ergo,
an augmentation of its frame
Follows
upon each novelty of forms.
Wherefore,
it cannot be thou’lt undertake That seeds have infinite differences in form,
Lest thus thou forcest some indeed to be Of an immeasurable immensity-Which I
have taught above cannot be proved.
. .
. .
. .
And
now for thee barbaric robes, and gleam Of Meliboean purple, touched with dye
Of the Thessalian shell...
The
peacock’s golden generations, stained With spotted gaieties, would lie o’erthrown
By some new colour of new things more bright;
The
odour of myrrh and savours of honey despised;
The
swan’s old lyric, and Apollo’s hymns, Once modulated on the many chords,
Would likewise sink o’ermastered and be mute:
For,
lo, a somewhat, finer than the rest,
Would
be arising evermore. So, too,
Into
some baser part might all retire,
Even
as we said to better might they come:
For,
lo, a somewhat, loathlier than the rest To nostrils, ears, and eyes, and taste
of tongue, Would then, by reasoning reversed, be there.
Since ‘tis not so, but unto things are given Their fixed limitations
which do bound Their sum on either side, ‘tmust be confessed That matter,
too, by finite tale of shapes Does differ. Again, from earth’s midsummer
heats Unto the icy hoar-frosts of the year The forward path is fixed, and by
like law O’ertravelled backwards at the dawn of spring.
For each degree of hot, and each of cold, And the half-warm, all
filling up the sum In due progression, lie, my Memmius, there Betwixt the two
extremes: the things create Must differ, therefore, by a finite change, Since
at each end marked off they ever are By fixed point- on one side plagued by
flames And on the other by congealing frosts.
The
which now having taught, I will go on
To
bind thereto a fact to this allied
And
drawing from this its proof: those primal germs
Which
have been fashioned all of one like shape
Are
infinite in tale; for, since the forms
Themselves
are finite in divergences,
Then
those which are alike will have to be
Infinite,
else the sum of stuff remains
A
fi