Delphi Complete Works of Lucretius

by Titus Lucretius Carus

  Of different atoms. Further, since the seeds

  Are different, difference must there also be

  In intervening spaces, thoroughfares,

  Connections, weights, blows, clashings, motions, all

  Which not alone distinguish living forms,

  But sunder earth’s whole ocean from the lands,

  And hold all heaven from the lands away.

  ABSENCE OF SECONDARY QUALITIES

  Now come, this wisdom by my sweet toil sought

  Look thou perceive, lest haply thou shouldst guess

  That the white objects shining to thine eyes

  Are gendered of white atoms, or the black

  Of a black seed; or yet believe that aught

  That’s steeped in any hue should take its dye

  From bits of matter tinct with hue the same.

  For matter’s bodies own no hue the least —

  Or like to objects or, again, unlike.

  But, if percase it seem to thee that mind

  Itself can dart no influence of its own

  Into these bodies, wide thou wand’rest off.

  For since the blind-born, who have ne’er surveyed

  The light of sun, yet recognise by touch

  Things that from birth had ne’er a hue for them,

  ’Tis thine to know that bodies can be brought

  No less unto the ken of our minds too,

  Though yet those bodies with no dye be smeared.

  Again, ourselves whatever in the dark

  We touch, the same we do not find to be

  Tinctured with any colour.

  Now that here

  I win the argument, I next will teach

  Now, every colour changes, none except,

  And every...

  Which the primordials ought nowise to do.

  Since an immutable somewhat must remain,

  Lest all things utterly be brought to naught.

  For change of anything from out its bounds

  Means instant death of that which was before.

  Wherefore be mindful not to stain with colour

  The seeds of things, lest things return for thee

  All utterly to naught.

  But now, if seeds

  Receive no property of colour, and yet

  Be still endowed with variable forms

  From which all kinds of colours they beget

  And vary (by reason that ever it matters much

  With what seeds, and in what positions joined,

  And what the motions that they give and get),

  Forthwith most easily thou mayst devise

  Why what was black of hue an hour ago

  Can of a sudden like the marble gleam, —

  As ocean, when the high winds have upheaved

  Its level plains, is changed to hoary waves

  Of marble whiteness: for, thou mayst declare,

  That, when the thing we often see as black

  Is in its matter then commixed anew,

  Some atoms rearranged, and some withdrawn,

  And added some, ’tis seen forthwith to turn

  Glowing and white. But if of azure seeds

  Consist the level waters of the deep,

  They could in nowise whiten: for however

  Thou shakest azure seeds, the same can never

  Pass into marble hue. But, if the seeds —

  Which thus produce the ocean’s one pure sheen —

  Be now with one hue, now another dyed,

  As oft from alien forms and divers shapes

  A cube’s produced all uniform in shape,

  ’Twould be but natural, even as in the cube

  We see the forms to be dissimilar,

  That thus we’d see in brightness of the deep

  (Or in whatever one pure sheen thou wilt)

  Colours diverse and all dissimilar.

  Besides, the unlike shapes don’t thwart the least

  The whole in being externally a cube;

  But differing hues of things do block and keep

  The whole from being of one resultant hue.

  Then, too, the reason which entices us

  At times to attribute colours to the seeds

  Falls quite to pieces, since white things are not

  Create from white things, nor are black from black,

  But evermore they are create from things

  Of divers colours. Verily, the white

  Will rise more readily, is sooner born

  Out of no colour, than of black or aught

  Which stands in hostile opposition thus.

  Besides, since colours cannot be, sans light,

  And the primordials come not forth to light,

  ’Tis thine to know they are not clothed with colour —

  Truly, what kind of colour could there be

  In the viewless dark? Nay, in the light itself

  A colour changes, gleaming variedly,

  When smote by vertical or slanting ray.

  Thus in the sunlight shows the down of doves

  That circles, garlanding, the nape and throat:

  Now it is ruddy with a bright gold-bronze,

  Now, by a strange sensation it becomes

  Green-emerald blended with the coral-red.

  The peacock’s tail, filled with the copious light,

  Changes its colours likewise, when it turns.

  Wherefore, since by some blow of light begot,

  Without such blow these colours can’t become.

  And since the pupil of the eye receives

  Within itself one kind of blow, when said

  To feel a white hue, then another kind,

  When feeling a black or any other hue,

  And since it matters nothing with what hue

  The things thou touchest be perchance endowed,

  But rather with what sort of shape equipped,

  ’Tis thine to know the atoms need not colour,

  But render forth sensations, as of touch,

  That vary with their varied forms.

  Besides,

  Since special shapes have not a special colour,

  And all formations of the primal germs

  Can be of any sheen thou wilt, why, then,

  Are not those objects which are of them made

  Suffused, each kind with colours of every kind?

  For then ‘twere meet that ravens, as they fly,

  Should dartle from white pinions a white sheen,

  Or swans turn black from seed of black, or be

  Of any single varied dye thou wilt.

  Again, the more an object’s rent to bits,

  The more thou see its colour fade away

  Little by little till ’tis quite extinct;

  As happens when the gaudy linen’s picked

  Shred after shred away: the purple there,

  Phoenician red, most brilliant of all dyes,

  Is lost asunder, ravelled thread by thread;

  Hence canst perceive the fragments die away

  From out their colour, long ere they depart

  Back to the old primordials of things.

  And, last, since thou concedest not all bodies

  Send out a voice or smell, it happens thus

  That not to all thou givest sounds and smells.

  So, too, since we behold not all with eyes,

  ’Tis thine to know some things there are as much

  Orphaned of colour, as others without smell,

  And reft of sound; and those the mind alert

  No less can apprehend than it can mark

  The things that lack some other qualities.

  But think not haply that the primal bodies

  Remain despoiled alone of colour: so,

  Are they from warmth dissevered and from cold

  And from hot exhalations; and they move,

  Both sterile of sound and dry of juice; and throw

  Not any odour from their proper bodies.

  Just as,
when undertaking to prepare

  A liquid balm of myrrh and marjoram,

  And flower of nard, which to our nostrils breathes

  Odour of nectar, first of all behooves

  Thou seek, as far as find thou may and can,

  The inodorous olive-oil (which never sends

  One whiff of scent to nostrils), that it may

  The least debauch and ruin with sharp tang

  The odorous essence with its body mixed

  And in it seethed. And on the same account

  The primal germs of things must not be thought

  To furnish colour in begetting things,

  Nor sound, since pow’rless they to send forth aught

  From out themselves, nor any flavour, too,

  Nor cold, nor exhalation hot or warm.

  The rest; yet since these things are mortal all —

  The pliant mortal, with a body soft;

  The brittle mortal, with a crumbling frame;

  The hollow with a porous-all must be

  Disjoined from the primal elements,

  If still we wish under the world to lay

  Immortal ground-works, whereupon may rest

  The sum of weal and safety, lest for thee

  All things return to nothing utterly.

  Now, too: whate’er we see possessing sense

  Must yet confessedly be stablished all

  From elements insensate. And those signs,

  So clear to all and witnessed out of hand,

  Do not refute this dictum nor oppose;

  But rather themselves do lead us by the hand,

  Compelling belief that living things are born

  Of elements insensate, as I say.

  Sooth, we may see from out the stinking dung

  Live worms spring up, when, after soaking rains,

  The drenched earth rots; and all things change the same:

  Lo, change the rivers, the fronds, the gladsome pastures

  Into the cattle, the cattle their nature change

  Into our bodies, and from our body, oft

  Grow strong the powers and bodies of wild beasts

  And mighty-winged birds. Thus nature changes

  All foods to living frames, and procreates

  From them the senses of live creatures all,

  In manner about as she uncoils in flames

  Dry logs of wood and turns them all to fire.

  And seest not, therefore, how it matters much

  After what order are set the primal germs,

  And with what other germs they all are mixed,

  And what the motions that they give and get?

  But now, what is’t that strikes thy sceptic mind,

  Constraining thee to sundry arguments

  Against belief that from insensate germs

  The sensible is gendered? — Verily,

  ’Tis this: that liquids, earth, and wood, though mixed,

  Are yet unable to gender vital sense.

  And, therefore, ‘twill be well in these affairs

  This to remember: that I have not said

  Senses are born, under conditions all,

  From all things absolutely which create

  Objects that feel; but much it matters here

  Firstly, how small the seeds which thus compose

  The feeling thing, then, with what shapes endowed,

  And lastly what they in positions be,

  In motions, in arrangements. Of which facts

  Naught we perceive in logs of wood and clods;

  And yet even these, when sodden by the rains,

  Give birth to wormy grubs, because the bodies

  Of matter, from their old arrangements stirred

  By the new factor, then combine anew

  In such a way as genders living things.

  Next, they who deem that feeling objects can

  From feeling objects be create, and these,

  In turn, from others that are wont to feel

  When soft they make them; for all sense is linked

  With flesh, and thews, and veins — and such, we see,

  Are fashioned soft and of a mortal frame.

  Yet be’t that these can last forever on:

  They’ll have the sense that’s proper to a part,

  Or else be judged to have a sense the same

  As that within live creatures as a whole.

  But of themselves those parts can never feel,

  For all the sense in every member back

  To something else refers — a severed hand,

  Or any other member of our frame,

  Itself alone cannot support sensation.

  It thus remains they must resemble, then,

  Live creatures as a whole, to have the power

  Of feeling sensation concordant in each part

  With the vital sense; and so they’re bound to feel

  The things we feel exactly as do we.

  If such the case, how, then, can they be named

  The primal germs of things, and how avoid

  The highways of destruction? — since they be

  Mere living things and living things be all

  One and the same with mortal. Grant they could,

  Yet by their meetings and their unions all,

  Naught would result, indeed, besides a throng

  And hurly-burly all of living things —

  Precisely as men, and cattle, and wild beasts,

  By mere conglomeration each with each

  Can still beget not anything of new.

  But if by chance they lose, inside a body,

  Their own sense and another sense take on,

  What, then, avails it to assign them that

  Which is withdrawn thereafter? And besides,

  To touch on proof that we pronounced before,

  Just as we see the eggs of feathered fowls

  To change to living chicks, and swarming worms

  To bubble forth when from the soaking rains

  The earth is sodden, sure, sensations all

  Can out of non-sensations be begot.

  But if one say that sense can so far rise

  From non-sense by mutation, or because

  Brought forth as by a certain sort of birth,

  ‘Twill serve to render plain to him and prove

  There is no birth, unless there be before

  Some formed union of the elements,

  Nor any change, unless they be unite.

  In first place, senses can’t in body be

  Before its living nature’s been begot, —

  Since all its stuff, in faith, is held dispersed

  About through rivers, air, and earth, and all

  That is from earth created, nor has met

  In combination, and, in proper mode,

  Conjoined into those vital motions which

  Kindle the all-perceiving senses — they

  That keep and guard each living thing soever.

  Again, a blow beyond its nature’s strength

  Shatters forthwith each living thing soe’er,

  And on it goes confounding all the sense

  Of body and mind. For of the primal germs

  Are loosed their old arrangements, and, throughout,

  The vital motions blocked, — until the stuff,

  Shaken profoundly through the frame entire,

  Undoes the vital knots of soul from body

  And throws that soul, to outward wide-dispersed,

  Through all the pores. For what may we surmise

  A blow inflicted can achieve besides

  Shaking asunder and loosening all apart?

  It happens also, when less sharp the blow,

  The vital motions which are left are wont

  Oft to win out — win out, and stop and still

  The uncouth tumults gendered by the blow,

  And call each part to its own courses back,

  And shake away the motion of death which now

 
Begins its own dominion in the body,

  And kindle anew the senses almost gone.

  For by what other means could they the more

  Collect their powers of thought and turn again

  From very doorways of destruction

  Back unto life, rather than pass whereto

  They be already well-nigh sped and so

  Pass quite away?

  Again, since pain is there

  Where bodies of matter, by some force stirred up,

  Through vitals and through joints, within their seats

  Quiver and quake inside, but soft delight,

  When they remove unto their place again:

  ’Tis thine to know the primal germs can be

  Assaulted by no pain, nor from themselves

  Take no delight; because indeed they are

  Not made of any bodies of first things,

  Under whose strange new motions they might ache

  Or pluck the fruit of any dear new sweet.

  And so they must be furnished with no sense.

  Once more, if thus, that every living thing

  May have sensation, needful ’tis to assign

  Sense also to its elements, what then

  Of those fixed elements from which mankind

  Hath been, by their peculiar virtue, formed?

  Of verity, they’ll laugh aloud, like men,

  Shaken asunder by a spasm of mirth,

  Or sprinkle with dewy tear-drops cheeks and chins,

  And have the cunning hardihood to say

  Much on the composition of the world,

  And in their turn inquire what elements

  They have themselves, — since, thus the same in kind

  As a whole mortal creature, even they

  Must also be from other elements,

  And then those others from others evermore —

  So that thou darest nowhere make a stop.

  Oho, I’ll follow thee until thou grant

  The seed (which here thou say’st speaks, laughs, and

  thinks)

  Is yet derived out of other seeds

  Which in their turn are doing just the same.

  But if we see what raving nonsense this,

  And that a man may laugh, though not, forsooth,

  Compounded out of laughing elements,

  And think and utter reason with learn’d speech,

  Though not himself compounded, for a fact,

  Of sapient seeds and eloquent, why, then,

  Cannot those things which we perceive to have

  Their own sensation be composed as well

  Of intermixed seeds quite void of sense?