On the Nature of the Universe (Oxford World’s Classics)

by Ronald Melville

  In solemn state the image thus adorned

  Of the holy Mother is borne now through the world.

  And different peoples in their ancient rites

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  Name her Idaean Mother; and Phrygians

  They appoint escort since from there, they say,

  First came the corn that spreads now through the world.

  Eunuchs they give her, wishing thus to show

  That those who violate the Mother’s godhead

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  And have been found ungrateful to their parents

  Must be accounted shameful and unworthy

  To bring live offspring into the shores of light.

  On tight-drawn drums palms thunder, cymbals clash,

  Horns blare their hoarse threats out, the hollow pipe

  Thrills every heart with Phrygian melodies.

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  Next spears are borne before her, savage signs

  Of force, to terrify the crowd’s ungrateful minds

  And impious hearts with fear of power divine.

  Therefore when first she rides through some great city,

  And silent, with unspoken benediction

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  Blesses mankind, much copper then and silver

  They strew along her way in rich largesse,

  And with a snow of roses falling, falling

  Shadow the Mother and her retinue.

  Next comes an armed band dancing, fired with blood,

  Leaping in rhythm midst the Phrygian throng,

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  Shaking their awful crests with nodding heads.

  These the Greeks name Curetes. They recall

  Dicte’s Curetes who, the story tells,

  In Crete once drowned the infant cries of Jove.

  A band of boys around the baby boy

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  All armed and nimbly dancing, keeping time,

  Clashed bronze on bronze, lest Saturn find the child

  And seize and crush him in his jaws, and deal

  The Mother’s heart an everlasting wound.

  Therefore in arms the Great Mother they escort,

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  Or else to show the goddess’ high command

  That they in arms and valour strong be ready

  To defend their native land, and to their parents

  Protection give and pride for all to see.

  All this is well and admirably told.

  It is, however, far removed from truth.

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  For perfect peace gods by their very nature

  Must of necessity enjoy, and immortal life,

  Far separate, far removed from our affairs.

  For free from every sorrow, every danger,

  Strong in their own powers, needing naught from us,

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  They are not won by gifts nor touched by anger.

  Indeed the earth is now and has been always

  Devoid entirely of any kind of feeling.

  The reason why it brings forth many things

  In many ways into the light of sun

  Is that it holds a multitude of atoms.

  If anyone decides to call the sea Neptune,

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  And corn Ceres, and misuse the name of Bacchus

  Rather than give grape juice its proper title,

  Let us agree that he can call the earth

  Mother of the Gods, on this condition—

  That he refuses to pollute his mind

  With the foul poison of religion.

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  We often see grazing the fields together

  Under the same wide canopy of heaven

  Sheep in their woolly flocks, the martial breed

  Of horses, and the horned herds of cattle,

  Quenching their thirst all from a single stream,

  And yet to each life gives a different shape,

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  And each retains the nature of its parents,

  Each after its kind copies their behaviour.

  So great is the variety of matter

  In every kind of herbage, every river.

  Moreover every animal of every kind

  Is made of bones, blood, veins, heat, moisture, flesh, and sinews,

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  And all of these are widely different,

  Being formed of atoms differently shaped.

  Again, whatever can be set on fire

  And burnt, for sure must hide within its body,

  If nothing else, at least the matter needed

  To generate flame and fire and send out light,

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  And make sparks fly and scatter glowing embers.

  And all the rest, if with like reasoning

  You run through them in your mind, you’ll find they have

  The seeds of many things hidden inside them

  And make combinations of atoms of various shapes.

  Again, you see many things have colour and taste

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  Together with smell. Chief among these might be

  Burnt offerings smoking on some holy altar.

  These therefore must be made of various shapes.

  For scent can permeate the human frame

  Where colour cannot go; and colour glides

  Into the senses separately from taste.

  Thus you’ll recognize that their atoms have different shapes.

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  Different shapes therefore combine in a single mass

  And all things are composed of a mixture of seeds.

  Everywhere in my verses you can see

  Many letters common to many words,

  Although it is obvious that both words and verses

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  Are different and composed of different letters.

  Not that there are not many letters common

  To separate words, or that no two words consist

  Of the same letters, but as a general rule

  Words are not made up of the same letters.

  Likewise in other things, though many atoms

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  Are common to many things, yet combined together

  They can make a whole quite different in substance.

  So that the human race and crops and fruitful trees

  We may rightly think are made from different elements.

  Do not imagine that atoms of every kind

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  Can be linked in every sort of combination.

  If that were so, then monsters everywhere

  You’ld see, things springing up half-man, half-beast,

  Tall branches sprouting from a living body,

  Limbs of land animals joined with those of sea.

  Chimaeras breathing flame from hideous mouths

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  Nature would feed throughout the fertile earth,

  Too fertile, generating everything.

  That these things do not happen is manifest.

  We see all things created from fixed seeds

  By a fixed parent and able as they grow

  To keep true to the stock from which they sprang.

  All this, for sure, fixed laws of nature govern.

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  Each thing contains its own specific atoms

  Which, fed by all its food, spread through the body

  Into the limbs and there, combined together,

  Produce appropriate movements. By contrast

  Alien elements are thrown back by nature

  Into the earth; and under the impact of blows

  Invisible particles fly off from the body

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  In quantity, unable anywhere

  To combine with it, or feel the vital motions

  That are in the body so as to copy them.

  However, you must not think these laws apply

  Only to animals. The same principle

  Determines everything that is in the world.

  All things created differ from each other

 
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  By their whole natures; each one therefore must

  Consist of atoms differently shaped.

  Not that there are not many atoms endowed

  With the same shape, but as a general rule

  Things do not consist wholly of the same atoms.

  Further, since the seeds are different, different also

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  Must be their intervals, paths, weights, and impacts,

  Connections, meetings, motions. These separate

  Not only animals, but land from sea,

  And hold the expanse of heaven apart from earth.

  Now here’s a matter which with labour sweet

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  I have researched. When you see before your eyes

  A white thing shining bright, do not suppose

  That it is made of white atoms; nor when you see something black

  That it is made of black atoms; or that anything

  Imbued with colour has it for the reason

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  That its atoms are dyed with corresponding colour.

  The atoms of matter are wholly without colour,

  Not of the same colour as things, nor of different colour.

  And if you think the mind cannot comprehend

  Bodies of this kind, you wander far astray.

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  Men blind from birth, who have never seen the light of sun,

  Nevertheless can recognize by touch

  Things that from birth they have not linked with colour.

  In the same way bodies not marked by any hue

  Are able to form a concept in the mind.

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  We ourselves, when we touch a thing in the dark,

  Do not feel that it possesses any colour.

  Since I have proved this, now I will show there are

  [One or more missing lines]

  Any colour can change completely into another,

  Which primal atoms never ought to do.

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  For something must survive unchangeable

  Lest all things utterly return to nothing.

  For all things have their own fixed boundaries;

  Transgress them, and death follows instantly.

  Therefore beware of staining atoms with colour

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  Lest you find all things utterly return to nothing.

  If atoms are by nature colourless

  But possess different shapes from which they make

  Colours of every kind in varied hues—

  A process in which it is of great importance

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  How they combine, what positions they take up,

  What motions mutually they give and take—

  That gives you at once a simple explanation

  Why things that were black a little while before

  Can suddenly become as white as marble,

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  As the sea when strong winds beat upon its surface

  Turns into white wave-crests of marble lustre.

  You could say that often what we see as black,

  When its matter has been mixed and the arrangement

  Of atoms changed, some added, some taken away,

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  Immediately is seen as white and shining.

  But if the atoms of the sea’s wide levels

  Were blue, they could not possibly be whitened.

  Stir up blue matter anyway you will,

  It can never change its colour into marble.

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  Or if the different atoms that compose

  The single unmixed brightness of the sea

  Are dyed with different colours, as a square,

  A single shape, may be made up of parts

  Of different shape and form, it would be right

  That, as in the square we see the different shapes,

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  So on the surface of the sea, or in

  The unmixed brightness of some other object,

  We should see various colours, widely different.

  Besides, the different shapes of various parts

  Do not prevent the whole from being a square;

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  But different colours make it impossible

  For a thing to possess one single brightness.

  The argument that sometimes entices us

  To attribute colours to atoms, falls apart;

  For white things are not made from white, nor black

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  From black, but both from different colours.

  White obviously comes much more easily

  From no colour than from black, or any other

  Colour that interferes with it and thwarts it.

  And since there can be no colour without light

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  And atoms do not emerge into the light,

  You can be certain that no colour clothes them.

  What colour can there be in total darkness?

  It is light itself that produces change of colour

  As things are lit by rays direct or slanting.

  The feathers of a pigeon in the sunshine

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  Around its neck, crowning its lovely head,

  Sometimes you see them gleaming bronze and ruby,

  At other times, viewed from a certain angle,

  They mix sky blue with green of emeralds.

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  A peacock’s tail, when filled with bounteous light,

  In the same way changes colour as it turns.

  These colours are made by incidence of light;

  Without it certainly no colour could exist.

  When the eye is said to see the colour white,

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  The pupil receives a certain kind of impact,

  And another when it sees black and all the rest;

  But when you touch things, it matters not at all

  What colour they have but only what the shape is.

  For sure then, atoms have no need of colour,

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  But their different shapes and forms produce

  Various sensations of touch and different feelings.

  There is no direct connection between colour and shape,

  And all formations of atoms can exist in every hue;

  Why therefore are things composed of them,

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  Not tinted all with every kind of colour?

  You would see ravens flying through the air

  Emit a snowy sheen from snowy wings,

  And swans turn black, their atoms being black,

  Or any colour uniform or mixed.

  Again, the more a thing is divided up

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  Into minute parts, the more you see the colour

  Fades gradually away and is extinguished.

  When purple cloth for instance is pulled to pieces

  Thread by thread, the purple and the scarlet,

  Brightest of colours, are totally destroyed.

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  So that you may see that, before its particles

  Are reduced to atoms, they breathe out all their colour.

  Finally, since you accept that certain things

  Emit neither noise nor smell, for this reason

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  You do not attribute sound or scent to everything.

  So, since our eyes cannot see everything,

  You may be sure that certain things exist

  Which have no colour, any more than scent or sound.

  And these the intelligent mind can comprehend

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  No less than things that lack some other quality.

  Do not suppose that atoms are bereft

  Only of colour. They are quite devoid

  Also of warmth and cold and fiery heat.

  Barren of sound and starved of taste they move.

  Their bodies emit no odour of their own.

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  When you set out to make a pleasing scent

  From marjoram
or myrrh or the sweet flower

  Of spikenard breathing nectar to our nostrils

  Among the first things that you need to seek

  Is an oil that is, so far as you may find one,

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  Odourless and emits no breath of anything.

  For this will least with harsh taint of its own

  Corrupt the scents concocted with its substance.

  For the same reason atoms must not bring

  An odour of their own in making things,

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  Nor sound, since they can emit nothing from themselves,

  Nor similarly taste of any kind,

  Nor cold likewise nor heat nor gentle warmth

  And all the rest. All these are perishable—

  The softness of their substance makes them pliant,

  Its hollowness porous, its brittleness makes them crumble—

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  All must be kept well separate from atoms,

  If we wish to lay a strong and sure foundation,

  Immortal, on which the sum of life may rest;

  Lest you find all things utterly returned to nothing.

  Now here is another point. Things that we see have feeling

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  Consist of atoms that are devoid of feeling.

  Nor do things plainly known to us

  And manifest refute this or fight against it.

  Rather they take us by the hand and make us believe

  That living things, as I say, are born from insentient atoms.

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  Why, you can see that living worms emerge

  From filthy dung when the wet earth is soaked

  And rotted by unseasonable rains.

  All other things are seen likewise to change.

  Rivers and leaves and joyful pastures change

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  Into cattle, and cattle change into our bodies,

  And often too our bodies build the strength

  Of wild beasts and winged masters of the air.

  So nature turns all foods to living bodies

  And from them makes all the senses of animals

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  In much the same way as she makes dry logs

  Unfold in flames and turns them into fire.

  Now do you see how very important is

  The order in which all the atoms are placed,

  How they combine, what motions they give and take?

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  What is it then that strikes the mind itself

  And moves it, and compels it to express

  Ideas which forbid you to believe

  That the sentient comes from the insentient?

  Doubtless it is that a mixture of water and logs

  And earth cannot produce a vital sense.

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  And here you will please bear this in mind:

  I do not say that all the substances

  Which produce sentient bodies always do so.

  It all depends how small the atoms are

  That make a sentient thing, what shapes they have,

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  What motions and arrangements and positions.