Delphi Complete Works of Lucretius

by Titus Lucretius Carus

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,

  Na
ture, 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 th
ose 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