On the Nature of Things · 5 of 30

Book II, Part 1

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 intertangled 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.