On the Nature of Things

Front matter

ON THE NATURE OF THINGS

LUCRETIUS ON THE NATURE OF THINGS (DE RERUM NATURA)

TRANSLATED WITH AN ANALYSIS OF THE SIX BOOKS

The Argument

THE ARGUMENT

BOOK I

1-43: the poet calls upon Venus, as mother of the Romans, author of their being to all living creatures and sole mistress of the nature of things, to help him in writing on that theme; but first to constrain her lover Mars the lord of war to grant peace to the Romans in order that he himself might have ease of mind to write, and his friend Memmius leisure to read what he wrote.

50-61: he calls on Memmius to attend, while he explains the nature of the first elements of things.

62-79: human life lay prostrate beneath religion, until a man of Greece rose up, explained the true system of the universe, and trampled on religion in turn.

80-101: think it not sinful thus to spurn religion nay rather it is religion who is the mother of unholy deeds; such as the sacrifice of Iphigenia by her own father.

102-135: 'you will yourself at times fall away from me, frightened by vain tales of eternal punishment, which men adopt from ignorance of the soul; about the nature of which there are many false theories: one is that of transmigration adopted by poet Ennius; his hell being peopled only by phantoms of the living. I must therefore in addition to what I have already promised explain the true nature of the soul, as well as of those idols which frighten us in sickness or sleep.'

136-145: 'the task is difficult; but love of you and your worth encourages me to labour to make these questions clear.'

146-158: this terror and darkness of mind must be dispelled by the knowledge of nature; whose first principle is 'nothing can be produced from nothing by divine power': from this truth all the rest will follow.

159-214: 'if things could come from nothing, any animal might be born any where, any fruit grow on any tree. But that every thing comes from a definite seed is proved in many ways: flowers corn fruits come at stated seasons: again animals and plants require time to grow up: the products of the earth want rain at stated times, animals food: men are of a definite size, and never grow to a gigantic bulk: lastly the fruits of the earth require cultivation, and do not improve spontaneously.' From the nature of the case this is rather a full statement of what he means by nothing coming from nothing than a proof: his theory of fixed unchangeable seeds of things or atoms he subsequently demonstrates with masterly clearness and power: some of his arguments even Newton seems not to have disdained to borrow.

215-264: nothing can be reduced to nothing: things dissolve only into their first-beginnings: if this were not so, a thing might pass away in a moment without any force: again how could all things, animate and inanimate, be replenished? if nothing were imperishable, infinite time past must have reduced all things to nothing: a mere touch would destroy all things alike: rains pass away; but the earth which receives them sends forth her produce; and from it all animals are nourished: nothing therefore is utterly destroyed.

265-328: 'doubt not what I say of first-beginnings, because they are not seen: many things in being you know by their effects, yet cannot see: winds work mischief in sky, on earth and sea; yet are not seen: they act by pressure just like rivers which are seen: smells heat cold sounds are not seen; yet have all body since they are in contact with sense: moisture leaves clothes without being seen: metals stones wear away; things grow, and decay, as rocks from sea-brine; yet the process of growth and decay is unseen in all.'

329-369: but there is void as well as body in things; else there could be no motion, no birth, no growth: the hardest things can be penetrated; and therefore have void in them: again things of equal size are not all of equal weight, only because one contains more or less void than another.

370-397: some falsely maintain that motion may take place thus: a fish for example advances, because the water it displaces goes into the space which it leaves. But without void how can water begin to give place, that the fish may begin to advance? Again two bodies in contact start asunder: there must be void between the two at all events until the air has filled this space: if you say the air condenses when the bodies are together, I assert that air cannot so condense; and if it could, it could not thus contract without void.

398-417: much more might I say; but a keen intellect can now by itself pursue the question farther: if however you demur, I have such store of arguments in reserve that our life will come to an end sooner than they.

418-448: all nature then consists of body, and void in which body moves: deny the existence of body, you take away the foundation on which rests all reasoning about abstruse things: without void no motion is possible as I have just shewn. There is no third nature distinct from these two: if a thing can touch or be touched, it is of the class of body; if it cannot, of void: neither sense nor reason can grasp any third class.

449-482: all other things are either inseparable properties or accidents of matter or void: time also exists not by itself: from the things that go on follows the feeling of past present and future: the actions done at the siege of Troy for instance did not exist by themselves, but were mere accidents of the men there or the places there: without body and space nothing which there happened could have happened.

483-502: the first-beginnings are perfectly solid and indestructible: sense suggests no notion of this solidity: reason can alone prove it.

503-550: where void is, body is not: these first bodies therefore are solid and without void: things in being, all contain pure void enclosed by pure body: these first bodies then may continue, when the things are broken up: and void we have shewn must exist; it alternates then with body: these first bodies cannot be crushed split or broken up from within; they are therefore eternal: without this eternal matter all things would have come from nothing, and would have been reduced to nothing: first-beginnings therefore are of solid singleness.

551-576: if these first bodies did not set a limit to the division of things, nothing could come into being; for as things are destroyed more quickly than renewed, infinite time to come could not restore what infinite time past had gone on breaking up: again with solid first bodies the existence of soft things can be explained by help of void: with soft first bodies the existence of hard things cannot be understood.

577-598: again we do see things in being: they must have had first-beginnings: could then these first-beginnings, if soft, have withstood the blows of infinite time? the persistency too of specific marks in living creatures seems to prove an unchangeable matter at bottom.

599-634: these first-beginnings have parts, but their parts are so small as not to admit of existence separate from the atom: the atom therefore has not been formed from a union of these parts, but they have existed in it unchangeably from eternity such parts then are but one more proof that the first-beginnings are of everlasting singleness: again without such ultimate least things, the smallest and largest thing will alike consist of infinite parts, and thus will be equal: again if nature went in division beyond the atom, such least things as these parts of the atom could not have the qualities which birth-giving matter must have, weight motion power of striking and clashing and combining.

635-644: to maintain therefore with Heraclitus and his followers that fire is the element of all things is absurd.

645-689: how could simple fire produce such a variety of things? it is of no use to condense or rarefy fire, if it always remains fire: nay they deny void without which even this condensing and rarefying is impossible. But if they say the fire is extinguished in the process, they make things come from nothing. The truth is there are certain first bodies which are not like fire nor any thing in being, but which produce fire and all other things alike by their varied shapes motions arrangements collisions.

690-704: again why do the senses, as Heraclitus says, perceive fire truly, but nothing else? one might just as well deny the reality of fire and affirm that of all other things.

705-733: for these reasons all err alike who affirm that any one of the four so-called elements, fire air water earth, is the first-beginning of things; or any two of these; or all four, as Empedocles teaches, that famous poet and philosopher of the famous island of Sicily.

734-762: he and the others have given responses truer than those of Phoebus; yet all alike have gone to wreck on the first-beginnings of things: they deny a void in things, yet give them motion and leave them soft and rare; and they set no limit to the division of things: if first-beginnings are soft, they were born and will die; all things therefore have come from and will return to nothing: again such elements are hostile one to the other; and thus, like lightning clouds winds, will be apt to fly asunder one from the other rather than combine.

763-781: things too might just as well be their elements, since things by turns come from them and pass into them: but if you say that these elements remain unchanged in things, then nothing can be produced from them, since in everything they will shew their own several natures: first-beginnings must have no properties that sense can apprehend.

782-802: again they suppose these elements to pass into each other in this ceaseless round, fire air water earth water air fire: but first-beginnings cannot thus change; they must be eternal, and of such a nature that when some go away, others join, and the rest change their order, those which made fire may now make air or anything else.

803-829: but, you will say, all these four elements are necessary for the production of things: true; and without meat and drink, life cannot continue: the reason is the same in both cases: many first-beginnings are common to many things; and the same by various mixtures motions and the like may produce the most different things; just as the same letters go to quite different words.

830-874: the homoeomeria of Anaxagoras is equally defective: everything he supposes to consist of infinitely small particles of the same nature as the thing: bones of small bones, and so on: he denies too void and any limit to the division of things, like those above mentioned: such first-beginnings as these cannot resist destruction; so that things would return to nothing. Again, as food increases the body, the parts of the body are formed of things different in kind: or if you say all food has particles like the parts of the body contained in it, then meat and drink consist of particles different in kind: the same dilemma will apply to what grows out of the earth, to flame latent in wood, and the like.

875-896: Anaxagoras tries to extricate himself by assuming that everything is latent in everything; but that that only is perceived, of which the like particles are most numerous and most prominent: a manifest fallacy; for then corn when ground, stones when rubbed, grass when chewed, clods when pulverised, wood when split should shew little bloods, grasses, ashes and fires, respectively the truth is that the seeds of things have no qualities like to those of things in being.

897-920: but you say trees often take fire by rubbing against each other: true, but for all that fire is not in them; else it would burst forth at any moment: the fact is fire and firs have many first-beginnings in common, just as the words have letters in common; but the two things, as the two words, are yet quite distinct. Again if you think a thing cannot be, unless its first-beginnings are of a like nature, then you must give these human feelings, in order that they may make a man.

921-950: 'listen now: inspired by the muses I enter on an untrodden path to cull a wreath yet worn by none: I am going to burst the bonds of religion; and clear up a dark subject by lucid verses, verses o'erlaid with the honey of the muses, in order to beguile my readers to their own profit, even as the rim of the cup is smeared with honey to entice children to drink the bitter but wholesome draught of wormwood.'

951-957: 'I have proved the existence of indestructible atoms and of void or space: are these atoms infinite in number? is this space infinite in extent?'

958-987: well then the universe is bounded on no side; for then it must have an end or outside; in which case there must be something beyond it, which may be seen to bound it; but there can be nothing outside the universe, which is therefore boundless on all sides. Again say for the moment space is finite: go now to its verge and fling a javelin: will it go in the direction you throw it, or will it be stopped by something? if there is something beyond to stop it, that something is in the universe; if it goes on, it has not started from the end of space: therefore you will be always in the universe, wherever you fling it. Lastly whatever you see, is bounded by and into something different; earth by sea, sea by earth and the like; but what is there outside to bound the universe?

988 (984)-1007: but space or void is likewise infinite; else matter during past eternity must have sunk in a mass to the bottom, and nothing could exist: but as space is infinite on all hands, there is no lowest point to which first-beginnings can tend: they have boundless room to move in for ever.

1008-1051: and the sum of things and matter too are infinite: the other question proposed above: for space being infinite, if matter were finite, then nothing in being could exist one moment: this world for example and all its parts would dissolve into their atoms; or rather could never have existed; for it is only by an infinite supply of matter that this earth and heaven can be maintained: the mutual clashings of atoms might keep this world, or any other world, supplied for a time; but only for a time: nay without infinite matter, even these clashings could not go on.

1052-1082: do not believe with some that all things tend to a centre, and therefore the world keeps together without external force, and things and animals beneath the earth cannot tumble into the sky any more than we can fly up to it: that our day is their night, their day our night: this is sheer folly: there is no centre in infinity, and, if there were, things would not be attracted any more than repelled by it: void everywhere alike yields to all body alike.

1083-1113: again they teach that while earth and water tend to the centre, air and fire fly from it, and that the earth sends up food to the treetops: they thus contradict themselves: the truth is that the whole of this doctrine is alike false; for, space being infinite, if matter were finite, the world and all that is in it, would in a moment dissolve into their first-beginnings: if on any one side matter fails, the door of destruction is opened to all alike.

1114-1117: master fully what has been said, and the whole of nature will soon be revealed to you.

BOOK II

1-61: sweet though it be to see from a place of safety the storm-tost sailor or the battling soldier, far sweeter is it from the heights of philosophy to look down on men lost in error and struggling for power and wealth: what blindness not to see how little is wanted to rid us of pain and bring us every innocent pleasure; often merely fresh air and fine weather, not palaces nor banquets! can purple cure a fever? It is not wealth or birth or power, no nor armies and navies that can free us from fear of religion and death, and all the cares of life: reason alone can deliver us from all such empty terrours.

62-79: 'and now I will explain the motion of atoms, how thereby everything comes into and goes out of being: matter is not inseparably united; it is ever going to or coming from things: every individual is thus changing, while the whole remains the same.'

80-141: First-beginnings, when alone, move ceaselessly through the infinite void by their own inherent motion or it may be after collision with another: some of intricate shapes form after collision a close union and thus help to compose hard bodies; others rebound to greater distances, and form softer bodies; some do not unite at all, but continue to wander through space: the motes in a sunbeam will give some notion of this: single atoms unite into small bodies, these small bodies form themselves into somewhat larger ones; till by little and little they become visible and are seen to move in the sun, though why they move is not seen.

142-164: the sun rises, and the world is at once clothed in light; yet its rays are complex, not single, and do not pass through a void: how much more swiftly then must first-beginnings move? since they travel through a perfect void and travel singly, and each is one indivisible whole.

165-183: 'they are greatly mistaken who think that the course of nature could not go on, nor the products of the earth and the race of men be con- tinued without divine providence: nay I might prove from the imperfection of this world that it is not divinely created.'

184-215: you are to know too that nothing naturally mounts upwards: flames and the growth of crops and trees are only apparent exceptions: thus blood from a wound spirts up; and a log forced down into the water starts up again; yet we know these things tend downwards by nature: so it is with flame: observe meteors and the like falling to earth; the rays of the sun tending downwards; lightnings flying about and falling to the ground: this is their natural tendency.

216-224: know too that atoms while travelling down space in parallel straight lines, at quite uncertain times and spots swerve from the perpendicular to an imperceptible amount.

225-250: you must not think that the heavier can overtake the lighter atoms and so give birth to things: a heavier thing falls more quickly than a lighter through water or air, because these offer unequal resistance to unequal weights: not so with void which yields to light and heavy alike: nothing therefore can account for the first collision of atoms except this declination; which must be the least possible, that we may not attribute to them oblique motions.

251-293: again if there is no such declination of atoms to break the eternal sameness of their motions, the perpetual sequence of cause and effect, whence have all living things freewill? whence can we change our motions at pleasure? thus horses cannot start in a race at once: motion has to spread from the heart through the limbs: thus too when we are carried along by an external force, there is something in us which resists, and enables us sometimes to stop: while the weight then of atoms enables them sometimes to withtstand the external force of blows, it is only this declination of atoms at quite uncertain times and places which gives the mind its freedom of action.

294-307: the matter of the whole universe never was either more or less condensed than it is now: the motions which first-beginnings now have, they always have had and will have: what they have produced, they will again produce: the sum of things in being no force can change; for no new matter can escape out of the universe nor come into it and change the order of nature.

308-332: though atoms are in constant motion, yet the whole universe appears to be at rest, because they are far beneath the ken of our senses: nay visible things often when seen from a distance seem to be at rest; as a flock of sheep feeding; or as an army of foot and horse, if looked down upon from a height.

333-380: know too that these first-beginnings are of many different shapes: thus no two men or other animals are quite alike; thus a cow knows its calf among all other calves; thus kids and lambs run each to its own mother; thus every grain of corn, every shell is distinct.

381-397: thus the fire of lightning can pass where earthly fire cannot, because it is formed of finer atoms: for like reasons light passes through horn, rain does not; wine runs easily, oil slowly through a strainer, because the elements of oil are larger or more hooked, and so cannot separate so readily.

398-407: honey and milk are pleasant to the taste, wormwood and the like nauseous; the former therefore consist of smooth, the latter of jagged atoms which tear a way into the body.

408-443: also what is pleasing or offensive to the other senses, to the hearing smell sight, must be formed of elements more or less smooth or rough respectively: again some bitter flavours have elements, not hooked, but slightly prominent: those of fire and cold are jagged, but in different ways as shewn by touch, which is the body's sense, whether it is affected pleasantly or unpleasantly, from within or from without.

444-477: again things hard and dense, stones metals and the like, have hooked and branching particles; fluids have them smooth and round: things again which do not cohere, but yet are pungent, smoke mist flame, have sharp, but not tangled elements: sea-water has particles round and smooth mixed with others round but rough which give it its saltness; and these latter by filtering you may separate from the former.

477-521: hence it appears that the number of different shapes in atoms is finite: some atoms must be infinitely large, if you have an infinite variety of shapes; for say certain atoms consist of three parts or four parts: their permutations will only give a certain number of shapes: go on increasing the number of parts, the shapes after every change of position will still be only finite in number: hence to get an infinite number of shapes, some atoms must be infinitely large; which is impossible: again were the shapes infinite, what is now best in colour smell flavour sound would be far surpassed; as well as what is worst: but as it is there is a limit to all this: there is a limit too to the heat and cold of the year.

521-568: the number of shapes being finite, the number of atoms of each shape is infinite, since it was proved in the first book that the sum of matter was infinite: if you say some animals are more scarce than would be the case, if the atoms of which they were made were infinite, I answer these animals may be very numerous in remote regions; but even if but one thing of its kind existed in the whole world, this would imply an infinite sum of atoms; else how could these have met and united in the boundless ocean of matter: the first-beginnings therefore of every shape and kind are infinite in number.

569-580: thus production and destruction alternately prevail, their elements ever waging equal war: no day passes without some dying, some being born.

581-599: this you must carefully bear in mind: the more powers and properties anything possesses, the greater variety of elements it contains: thus the earth has elements out of which seas and fountains and fires, out of which crops and trees, rivers and pastures are supplied; it is therefore called mother of gods men and beasts alike.

600-660: her the old Greeks have personified as the great mother: she rides in a chariot drawn by lions; wears a mural crown, has Phrygian attendants, is accompanied with noisy music, receives on all hands alms; her followers represent the Curetes who saved the young Jupiter from his father: all which things are an allegory with some moral significance; but beautiful as they are, they are mere fancies; the blessed and immortal gods trouble themselves not about men: as you call the sea Neptune and the like, call the earth mother of the gods, if you please; but remember at the same time that it is senseless matter, only containing the elements of many things.

661-699: in this way sheep horses cattle eating the same grass and drinking from the same river all keep their distinctive differences: thus grass and each river must contain most different elements: nay the parts of the same animal are quite different; and are formed therefore of different elements then too fuel must contain elements of fire and flame and ash: then many things have divers properties, colour flavour smell; and these have all different elements as they enter things in different ways: things therefore must be of mixed seed: again as the same letters are common to different words, so the same elements may be common to most different things, to men corn trees.

700-729: but all elements cannot unite in all ways; else monsters of all kinds would arise: every creature has its fixed seeds, fixed mother; and thus is kept within its limits; and of the elements it takes as food some only remain, others are rejected as unsuitable: and so it is with inanimate as well as animate things: they have each elements different or differently combined; and the modes of action of these elements differ, so that not only living bodies, but all nature, earth sea and heaven, are kept distinct.

730-756: atoms have no colour whatever: the mind has to conceive them as without colour; for any colour may change into any other; but the first bodies are unchangeable, or things would pass into nothing.

757-787: again if atoms have no colour, but beget any colour by their different shapes positions motions and the like, you can explain change of colour: thus the green sea becomes white: why? by its elements changing their order, and by some going, others coming: but green elements could not become white. But if you say they have different colours, then you should see in the one colour of the sea others quite different mixed up, as in a square composed of various shapes you see these shapes: again these shapes do not prevent the whole exterior being square; but different colours would prevent a thing being of one colour.

788-794: we are tempted to give to atoms colour, not knowing how colour otherwise can come: but we have seen that white can come from what is not white; and surely white can arise more easily from no colour, than for instance from black this reason then falls to the ground.

795-816: again colours cannot exist without light, atoms never come into the light, therefore atoms have no colour: what colour can there be in darkness, when we see that the same thing continually changes its colour in different lights? as therefore it is such and such stroke of light which produces such and such colour, without that stroke they cannot exist: as too one stroke produces white, another black, and as a stroke is a touch, and as it is a shape, not colour which affects touch, atoms need not colour, but different shapes to give different touches.

817-825: again if atoms have colour, it will not be said that this or that colour belongs only to this or that shape of atom: why then should not things formed out of coloured atoms vary their colours? why should not crows be sometimes white, swans black or green?

826-833: again the smaller the shreds into which a thing is divided, the more its colour vanishes: be sure then all colour is gone before a thing comes to its first elements.

834-841: you do not assign sound or smell to things which give forth no sound nor smell: why then attribute colour to all things? The mind can perceive things without colour as well as things without smell.

842-864: but atoms are likewise without heat or cold, without sound flavour or smell. As in preparing a perfume you seek out a quite scentless oil, that it may not infect the perfume with its own scent; thus first-beginnings must possess neither heat nor cold, smell sound nor flavour: these qualities are all frail and mortal, and must there- fore be wanting to immortal elements unless things are to pass away to nothing.

865-885: all things which have sense come from insensible elements: a visible proof of this you may see in living worms rising from the putrid earth: again grass and water change into cattle, the flesh of cattle into men, men often go to feed beasts and birds: nature turns food into what has life and sense, much as dry wood passes into flame; so much is effected by transposition and mixture and motions of elements.

886-930: the mind tries hard not to believe that sense can come from what has not sense; for stones woods clods can by no mixture produce it: but, mind, it is not every element that can beget sense; only certain atoms with certain shapes and arrangements: but even these woods and clods may, as we have seen, give birth sometimes to living things. But they who say that sense can only come from what has sense, suppose elements to be soft, as we never see sense united but with what is soft: yet suppose such elements eternal; they must have the sense of some part or of the whole living thing: but no part can feel away from the whole thing: well then these elements must be like the whole living thing: if they are living then, they are thereby liable to death; but even if they are not, they would make but a medley of living things, like the impossible unions of men and brutes: but if they lose their own sense, why then give it only to take it away? nay we have just seen that sense can come from what has no sense.