On the Nature of Things · 16 of 30

Book IV, Part 3

And thus no doubt there is, that voice and words Consist of elements corporeal, With power to pain. Nor art thou unaware Likewise how much of body’s ta’en away, How much from very thews and powers of men May be withdrawn by steady talk, prolonged Even from the rising splendour of the morn To shadows of black evening,- above all If ‘t be outpoured with most exceeding shouts. Therefore the voice must be corporeal, Since the long talker loses from his frame A part. Moreover, roughness in the sound Comes from the roughness in the primal germs, As a smooth sound from smooth ones is create; Nor have these elements a form the same When the trump rumbles with a hollow roar, As when barbaric Berecynthian pipe Buzzes with raucous boomings, or when swans By night from icy shores of Helicon With wailing voices raise their liquid dirge.

Thus, when from deep within our frame we force These voices, and at mouth expel them forth, The mobile tongue, artificer of words, Makes them articulate, and too the lips By their formations share in shaping them. Hence when the space is short from starting-point To where that voice arrives, the very words Must too be plainly heard, distinctly marked. For then the voice conserves its own formation, Conserves its shape. But if the space between Be longer than is fit, the words must be Through the much air confounded, and the voice Disordered in its flight across the winds- And so it haps, that thou canst sound perceive, Yet not determine what the words may mean; To such degree confounded and encumbered The voice approaches us. Again, one word, Sent from the crier’s mouth, may rouse all ears Among the populace. And thus one voice Scatters asunder into many voices, Since it divides itself for separate ears, Imprinting form of word and a clear tone. But whatso part of voices fails to hit The ears themselves perishes, borne beyond, Idly diffused among the winds. A part, Beating on solid porticoes, tossed back Returns a sound; and sometimes mocks the ear With a mere phantom of a word. When this Thou well hast noted, thou canst render count Unto thyself and others why it is Along the lonely places that the rocks Give back like shapes of words in order like, When search we after comrades wandering Among the shady mountains, and aloud Call unto them, the scattered. I have seen Spots that gave back even voices six or seven For one thrown forth- for so the very hills, Dashing them back against the hills, kept on With their reverberations. And these spots The neighbouring country-side doth feign to be Haunts of the goat-foot satyrs and the nymphs; And tells ye there be fauns, by whose night noise And antic revels yonder they declare The voiceless silences are broken oft, And tones of strings are made and wailings sweet Which the pipe, beat by players’ finger-tips, Pours out; and far and wide the farmer-race Begins to hear, when, shaking the garmentings Of pine upon his half-beast head, god-Pan With puckered lip oft runneth o’er and o’er The open reeds,- lest flute should cease to pour The woodland music! Other prodigies And wonders of this ilk they love to tell, Lest they be thought to dwell in lonely spots And even by gods deserted. This is why They boast of marvels in their story-tellings; Or by some other reason are led on- Greedy, as all mankind hath ever been, To prattle fables into ears. Again, One need not wonder how it comes about That through those places (through which eyes cannot View objects manifest) sounds yet may pass And assail the ears. For often we observe People conversing, though the doors be closed; No marvel either, since all voice unharmed Can wind through bended apertures of things, While idol-films decline to- for they’re rent, Unless along straight apertures they swim, Like those in glass, through which all images Do fly across. And yet this voice itself, In passing through shut chambers of a house, Is dulled, and in a jumble enters ears, And sound we seem to hear far more than words. Moreover, a voice is into all directions Divided up, since off from one another New voices are engendered, when one voice Hath once leapt forth, outstarting into many- As oft a spark of fire is wont to sprinkle Itself into its several fires. And so, Voices do fill those places hid behind, Which all are in a hubbub round about, Astir with sound. But idol-films do tend, As once set forth, in straight directions all; Wherefore one can inside a wall see naught, Yet catch the voices from beyond the same.

Nor tongue and palate, whereby we flavour feel, Present more problems for more work of thought. Firstly, we feel a flavour in the mouth, When forth we squeeze it, in chewing up our food,- As any one perchance begins to squeeze With hand and dry a sponge with water soaked. Next, all which forth we squeeze is spread about Along the pores and intertwined paths Of the loose-textured tongue. And so, when smooth The bodies of the oozy flavour, then Delightfully they touch, delightfully They treat all spots, around the wet and trickling Enclosures of the tongue. And contrariwise, They sting and pain the sense with their assault, According as with roughness they’re supplied. Next, only up to palate is the pleasure Coming from flavour; for in truth when down ‘Thas plunged along the throat, no pleasure is, Whilst into all the frame it spreads around; Nor aught it matters with what food is fed The body, if only what thou take thou canst Distribute well digested to the frame And keep the stomach in a moist career. Now, how it is we see some food for some, Others for others....

I will unfold, or wherefore what to some Is foul and bitter, yet the same to others Can seem delectable to eat,- why here So great the distance and the difference is That what is food to one to some becomes Fierce poison, as a certain snake there is Which, touched by spittle of a man, will waste And end itself by gnawing up its coil. Again, fierce poison is the hellebore To us, but puts the fat on goats and quails. That thou mayst know by what devices this Is brought about, in chief thou must recall What we have said before, that seeds are kept Commixed in things in divers modes. Again, As all the breathing creatures which take food Are outwardly unlike, and outer cut And contour of their members bounds them round, Each differing kind by kind, they thus consist Of seeds of varying shape. And furthermore, Since seeds do differ, divers too must be The interstices and paths (which we do call The apertures) in all the members, even In mouth and palate too. Thus some must be More small or yet more large, three-cornered some And others squared, and many others round, And certain of them many-angled too In many modes. For, as the combination And motion of their divers shapes demand, The shapes of apertures must be diverse And paths must vary according to their walls That bound them. Hence when what is sweet to some, Becomes to others bitter, for him to whom ’Tis sweet, the smoothest particles must needs Have entered caressingly the palate’s pores. And, contrariwise, with those to whom that sweet Is sour within the mouth, beyond a doubt The rough and barbed particles have got Into the narrows of the apertures. Now easy it is from these affairs to know Whatever…

Indeed, where one from o’er-abundant bile Is stricken with fever, or in other wise Feels the roused violence of some malady, There the whole frame is now upset, and there All the positions of the seeds are changed,- So that the bodies which before were fit To cause the savour, now are fit no more, And now more apt are others which be able To get within the pores and gender sour. Both sorts, in sooth, are intermixed in honey- What oft we’ve proved above to thee before. Now come, and I will indicate what wise Impact of odour on the nostrils touches. And first, ’tis needful there be many things From whence the streaming flow of varied odours May roll along, and we’re constrained to think They stream and dart and sprinkle themselves about Impartially. But for some breathing creatures One odour is more apt, to others another- Because of differing forms of seeds and pores. Thus on and on along the zephyrs bees Are led by odour of honey, vultures too By carcasses. Again, the forward power Of scent in dogs doth lead the hunter on Whithersoever the splay-foot of wild beast Hath hastened its career; and the white goose, The saviour of the Roman citadel, Forescents afar the odour of mankind. Thus, diversely to divers ones is given Peculiar smell that leadeth each along To his own food or makes him start aback From loathsome poison, and in this wise are The generations of the wild preserved.

Yet is this pungence not alone in odours Or in the class of flavours; but, likewise, The look of things and hues agree not all So well with senses unto all, but that Some unto some will be, to gaze upon, More keen and painful. Lo, the raving lions, They dare not face and gaze upon the cock Who’s wont with wings to flap away the night From off the stage, and call the beaming morn With clarion voice- and lions straightway thus Bethink themselves of flight, because, ye see, Within the body of the cocks there be Some certain seeds, which, into lions’ eyes Injected, bore into the pupils deep And yield such piercing pain they can’t hold out Against the cocks, however fierce they be- Whilst yet these seeds can’t hurt our gaze the least, Either because they do not penetrate, Or since they have free exit from the eyes As soon as penetrating, so that thus They cannot hurt our eyes in any part By there remaining. To speak once more of odour; Whatever assail the nostrils, some can travel A longer way than others. None of them, However, ’s borne so far as sound or voice- While I omit all mention of such things As hit the eyesight and assail the vision. For slowly on a wandering course it comes And perishes sooner, by degrees absorbed Easily into all the winds of air; And first, because from deep inside the thing It is discharged with labour (for the fact That every object, when ’tis shivered, ground, Or crumbled by the fire, will smell the stronger Is sign that odours flow and part away From inner regions of the things). And next, Thou mayest see that odour is create Of larger primal germs than voice, because It enters not through stony walls, wherethrough Unfailingly the voice and sound are borne; Wherefore, besides, thou wilt observe ’tis not So easy to trace out in whatso place The smelling object is. For, dallying on Along the winds, the particles cool off, And then the scurrying messengers of things Arrive our senses, when no longer hot. So dogs oft wander astray, and hunt the scent.

Now mark, and hear what objects move the mind, And learn, in few, whence unto intellect Do come what come. And first I tell thee this: That many images of objects rove In many modes to every region round- So thin that easily the one with other, When once they meet, uniteth in mid-air, Like gossamer or gold-leaf. For, indeed, Far thinner are they in their fabric than Those images which take a hold on eyes And smite the vision, since through body’s pores They penetrate, and inwardly stir up The subtle nature of mind and smite the sense. Thus, Centaurs and the limbs of Scyllas, thus The Cerberus-visages of dogs we see, And images of people gone before- Dead men whose bones earth bosomed long ago; Because the images of every kind Are everywhere about us borne- in part Those which are gendered in the very air Of own accord, in part those others which From divers things do part away, and those Which are compounded, made from out their shapes. For soothly from no living Centaur is That phantom gendered, since no breed of beast Like him was ever; but, when images Of horse and man by chance have come together, They easily cohere, as aforesaid, At once, through subtle nature and fabric thin. In the same fashion others of this ilk Created are. And when they’re quickly borne In their exceeding lightness, easily (As earlier I showed) one subtle image, Compounded, moves by its one blow the mind, Itself so subtle and so strangely quick.

That these things come to pass as I record, From this thou easily canst understand: So far as one is unto other like, Seeing with mind as well as with the eyes Must come to pass in fashion not unlike. Well, now, since I have shown that I perceive Haply a lion through those idol-films Such as assail my eyes, ’tis thine to know Also the mind is in like manner moved, And sees, nor more nor less than eyes do see (Except that it perceives more subtle films) The lion and aught else through idol-films. And when the sleep has overset our frame, The mind’s intelligence is now awake, Still for no other reason, save that these- The self-same films as when we are awake- Assail our minds, to such degree indeed That we do seem to see for sure the man Whom, void of life, now death and earth have gained Dominion over. And Nature forces this To come to pass because the body’s senses Are resting, thwarted through the members all, Unable now to conquer false with true; And memory lies prone and languishes In slumber, nor protests that he, the man Whom the mind feigns to see alive, long since Hath been the gain of death and dissolution.

And further, ’tis no marvel idols move And toss their arms and other members round In rhythmic time- and often in men’s sleeps It haps an image this is seen to do; In sooth, when perishes the former image, And other is gendered of another pose, That former seemeth to have changed its gestures. Of course the change must be conceived as speedy; So great the swiftness and so great the store Of idol-things, and (in an instant brief As mind can mark) so great, again, the store Of separate idol-parts to bring supplies.

It happens also that there is supplied Sometimes an image not of kind the same; But what before was woman, now at hand Is seen to stand there, altered into male; Or other visage, other age succeeds; But slumber and oblivion take care That we shall feel no wonder at the thing.