far as we can, to bear in mind the awful but too often disregarded warning given by the poet himself: "Omnia enim stolidi magis admirantur amantque, veraque constituunt quæ belle tangere possunt auris et lepido quæ sunt fucata sonore.' "1 119. As the purpose of the poem of Lucretius is the establishment of the very opposite of our present theme, we must consider a good deal more of his work than the mere properties of atoms. Lucretius tells us that his object is to dispel the fear of the gods, which he supposes to arise simply from the fact that there are so many things which men do not yet understand, and therefore imagine to be effected by divine power. Religion, which crushes human life prostrate upon earth, is, he says, now put under foot; and the great victory achieved by his Greek instructor over the immeasurable universe (in finding what can and what cannot come into being) brings us level with heaven. His followers are not to fancy that there is any sin in this; on the contrary, religion has perpetually been the cause of sinful deeds. There is, however, danger of their relapse, for the terror-speaking seers may once more overcome them. But if men could only be convinced that the soul is born and perishes with us, then they would be able to take their ease, and withstand alike religious scruples and threatenings of the seers. For this purpose we must find out what mind and soul consist of, and how everything on earth proceeds; and if we can do this, we may, of course, dispense with the gods. 1 i. 641. Thus rendered by Munro :-" For fools admire and like all things the more which they perceive to be concealed under involved language, and determine things to be true which can prettily tickle the ears and are varnished over with finely sounding phrase." 120. FIRST, then, nothing comes from nothing, which seems to be meant in the sense that there is a physical cause for everything; at least all the examples which are adduced in proof of the statement are mere instances of what might be conceived to happen if there were no fixed determining physical law or cause. But the author is obscure on this point, for he sometimes makes us inclined to think that he is virtually only asserting the eternal, unchangeable, existence of the atom,—the “first beginning of things." As a corollary to this, of course, nature does not annihilate things, but dissolves them back into their first bodies. The same negative proof is here attempted. Nothing is lost, but nature can beget nothing till she is recruited by the death of something else. Then, to reconcile the reader to the invisibility of these first bodies, he is shown how nature works by invisible things, as wind and moisture ; how marriage-rings and paving-stones, ploughshares and statues, are worn away without the loss of any visible particles. Nature, therefore, works by unseen bodies. Smell, heat, cold, etc., must consist of a bodily nature, because they affect the senses; for nothing but body can touch and be touched. 121. But, SECONDLY, there is also void in things, else they would be jammed together, and unable to move. It is false to say that things may move in a plenum: as, when a fish presses on, it leaves room behind it, into which the water may stream; for on what side can the scaly creature move forwards unless the waters have first made room; and on what side can the waters give place so long as the fish cannot move? (This of course is metaphysics, and is altogether absurd. It is the old story of the immovable body receiving the irresistible blow.) Hence there cannot be motion G unless there be void to allow of a start. Dripping of water in caves, the passage of food throughout the whole body of an animal, the fact that buds and fruit of trees are nourished from the root, voices heard through walls, cold penetrating the very bones, all are proofs that there is void as well as body. Also when one thing is as large as another, but yet lighter, there must be more void in it. 122. THIRD. There can be no third thing besides body and void. For if it be to the smallest extent tangible, it is body; if not, it is void. 123. FOURTH. Bodies are either first beginnings of things (atoms), or a union of such. Any thing which can be broken or crushed, or which can transmit heat or electricity, is partly body and partly void. Hence body cannot be crushed, and "therefore first beginnings are of solid singleness, and in no other way can they have been preserved through ages during infinite time past, in order to reproduce things." 124. FIFTH. If there be no limit to breakage, nothing could be reproduced; for reproduction is slower than decay, and therefore the breaking of infinite past ages would have produced a state of things incompatible with the reproduction of anything within finite time. Hence there exists a least in things. This cannot be soft, else it would consist partly of void, and be therefore breakable. First beginnings, then, are strong in solid singleness. Hence the unreason of those who held fire to be the matter of things, for what surer test can we have than the senses whereby to note truth and falsehood! The doctrine called that of Homœomeria by Anaxagoras is folly, his notion, to wit, that everything is made up of little parts the same as itself-bones of little bones, flesh of little fleshes, etc. For thus corn and other food, which go to nourish our blood, must be in part composed of blood, and must therefore bleed when crushed by the formidable force of the millstone! 125. SIXTH. Are the atoms infinite in number, and is the void in which they move unlimited? Both questions are answered in the affirmative, but the proof given is metaphysical and altogether ridiculous, though it contains a fragmentary passage of real merit, hinting at Le Sage's explanation (presently to be given) of the cause of gravity. One illustration of it must suffice :-"Nature keeps the sum of things from setting any limit to itself, since she compels body to be ended by void, and void in turn by body;" so that either by the alternation of the two, or by the infinite extension of one if the other do not bound it, immeasurable space must be filled. If, for instance, body were finite, and void infinite, matter would in a very short time be scattered. and borne along in the mighty void; or, rather, could never have been brought together. This agrees with an idea which is propounded in the second book, as to the velocity which the atoms have given them (he does not say how or whence), and which enables them to cohere for a time and then to break up again, as everything wanes. Those whose close-tangled shapes hold them fast together form enduring stone and unyielding iron, others spring far off and rebound, leaving great spaces between; "these furnish us with thin air and bright sunlight." Shortly afterwards, we are told that the velocity of the first beginnings when passing through empty void must be greater than that of sunlight! We need not trouble ourselves here with Lucretius's speculations as to the formation of tangible bodies from a vertical downpour of atoms, which, unlike drops of rain, now and then swerve from their courses so as to clash together, save to mention that he affirms that, even if he did not know what atoms are, he could be sure, from its defects, that the world was not made for us by divine power. 126. SEVENTH. This, one of the most important points of the whole theory, is entirely ignored by some good commentators, and by others who have more or less closely followed them :-The first beginnings of things have different shapes, but the number of shapes is finite. 127. EIGHTH. The first beginnings which have a like shape, one with another, are infinite in number. That is, there is a finite number of kinds of atoms, but an infinite number of each kind. 128. NINTH. Nothing whose nature is apparent to sense consists of one kind of first beginnings (only). 129. We need not trouble ourselves with his notion of the smallness, smoothness, and roundness of the atoms which make up the mind, qualities which he arrives at from the rapidity with which the mind originates and works out a suggestion, contrasting here the mobility of water and the viscosity of honey. Nor his proof (by the non-diminution of the weight and dimensions of the body at death), that the whole mass of the mind must be exceedingly small. But we may quote, in two of its many forms, his constant reiteration of the unreasonableness of the fear of death, and his philosophic mode of overcoming it: "Some wear themselves to death for the sake of statues and a name. And often to such a degree, through dread of death, does hate of life and of the sight of daylight seize upon mortals, that they consider self-murder with a sorrow |