On the Nature of Things

Titus Lucretius Carus

On the Nature of Things

BOOK I

PROEM

     Mother of Rome, delight of Gods and men,     Dear Venus that beneath the gliding stars     Makest to teem the many-voyaged main     And fruitful lands—for all of living things     Through thee alone are evermore conceived,     Through thee are risen to visit the great sun—     Before thee, Goddess, and thy coming on,     Flee stormy wind and massy cloud away,     For thee the daedal Earth bears scented flowers,     For thee waters of the unvexed deep     Smile, and the hollows of the serene sky     Glow with diffused radiance for thee!     For soon as comes the springtime face of day,     And procreant gales blow from the West unbarred,     First fowls of air, smit to the heart by thee,     Foretoken thy approach, O thou Divine,     And leap the wild herds round the happy fields     Or swim the bounding torrents. Thus amain,     Seized with the spell, all creatures follow thee     Whithersoever thou walkest forth to lead,     And thence through seas and mountains and swift streams,     Through leafy homes of birds and greening plains,     Kindling the lure of love in every breast,     Thou bringest the eternal generations forth,     Kind after kind. And since 'tis thou alone     Guidest the Cosmos, and without thee naught     Is risen to reach the shining shores of light,     Nor aught of joyful or of lovely born,     Thee do I crave co-partner in that verse     Which I presume on Nature to compose     For Memmius mine, whom thou hast willed to be     Peerless in every grace at every hour—     Wherefore indeed, Divine one, give my words     Immortal charm. Lull to a timely rest     O'er sea and land the savage works of war,     For thou alone hast power with public peace     To aid mortality; since he who rules     The savage works of battle, puissant Mars,     How often to thy bosom flings his strength     O'ermastered by the eternal wound of love—     And there, with eyes and full throat backward thrown,     Gazing, my Goddess, open-mouthed at thee,     Pastures on love his greedy sight, his breath     Hanging upon thy lips. Him thus reclined     Fill with thy holy body, round, above!     Pour from those lips soft syllables to win     Peace for the Romans, glorious Lady, peace!     For in a season troublous to the state     Neither may I attend this task of mine     With thought untroubled, nor mid such events     The illustrious scion of the Memmian house     Neglect the civic cause.                            Whilst human kind     Throughout the lands lay miserably crushed     Before all eyes beneath Religion—who     Would show her head along the region skies,     Glowering on mortals with her hideous face—     A Greek it was who first opposing dared     Raise mortal eyes that terror to withstand,     Whom nor the fame of Gods nor lightning's stroke     Nor threatening thunder of the ominous sky     Abashed; but rather chafed to angry zest     His dauntless heart to be the first to rend     The crossbars at the gates of Nature old.     And thus his will and hardy wisdom won;     And forward thus he fared afar, beyond     The flaming ramparts of the world, until     He wandered the unmeasurable All.     Whence he to us, a conqueror, reports     What things can rise to being, what cannot,     And by what law to each its scope prescribed,     Its boundary stone that clings so deep in Time.     Wherefore Religion now is under foot,     And us his victory now exalts to heaven.     I know how hard it is in Latian verse     To tell the dark discoveries of the Greeks,     Chiefly because our pauper-speech must find     Strange terms to fit the strangeness of the thing;     Yet worth of thine and the expected joy     Of thy sweet friendship do persuade me on     To bear all toil and wake the clear nights through,     Seeking with what of words and what of song     I may at last most gloriously uncloud     For thee the light beyond, wherewith to view     The core of being at the centre hid.     And for the rest, summon to judgments true,     Unbusied ears and singleness of mind     Withdrawn from cares; lest these my gifts, arranged     For thee with eager service, thou disdain     Before thou comprehendest: since for thee     I prove the supreme law of Gods and sky,     And the primordial germs of things unfold,     Whence Nature all creates, and multiplies     And fosters all, and whither she resolves     Each in the end when each is overthrown.     This ultimate stock we have devised to name     Procreant atoms, matter, seeds of things,     Or primal bodies, as primal to the world.     I fear perhaps thou deemest that we fare     An impious road to realms of thought profane;     But 'tis that same religion oftener far     Hath bred the foul impieties of men:     As once at Aulis, the elected chiefs,     Foremost of heroes, Danaan counsellors,     Defiled Diana's altar, virgin queen,     With Agamemnon's daughter, foully slain.     She felt the chaplet round her maiden locks     And fillets, fluttering down on either cheek,     And at the altar marked her grieving sire,     The priests beside him who concealed the knife,     And all the folk in tears at sight of her.     With a dumb terror and a sinking knee     She dropped; nor might avail her now that first     'Twas she who gave the king a father's name.     They raised her up, they bore the trembling girl     On to the altar—hither led not now     With solemn rites and hymeneal choir,     But sinless woman, sinfully foredone,     A parent felled her on her bridal day,     Making his child a sacrificial beast     To give the ships auspicious winds for Troy:     Such are the crimes to which Religion leads.     And there shall come the time when even thou,     Forced by the soothsayer's terror-tales, shalt seek     To break from us. Ah, many a dream even now     Can they concoct to rout thy plans of life,     And trouble all thy fortunes with base fears.     I own with reason: for, if men but knew     Some fixed end to ills, they would be strong     By some device unconquered to withstand     Religions and the menacings of seers.     But now nor skill nor instrument is theirs,     Since men must dread eternal pains in death.     For what the soul may be they do not know,     Whether 'tis born, or enter in at birth,     And whether, snatched by death, it die with us,     Or visit the shadows and the vasty caves     Of Orcus, or by some divine decree     Enter the brute herds, as our Ennius sang,     Who first from lovely Helicon brought down     A laurel wreath of bright perennial leaves,     Renowned forever among the Italian clans.     Yet Ennius too in everlasting verse     Proclaims those vaults of Acheron to be,     Though thence, he said, nor souls nor bodies fare,     But only phantom figures, strangely wan,     And tells how once from out those regions rose     Old Homer's ghost to him and shed salt tears     And with his words unfolded Nature's source.     Then be it ours with steady mind to clasp     The purport of the skies—the law behind     The wandering courses of the sun and moon;     To scan the powers that speed all life below;     But most to see with reasonable eyes     Of what the mind, of what the soul is made,     And what it is so terrible that breaks     On us asleep, or waking in disease,     Until we seem to mark and hear at hand     Dead men whose bones earth bosomed long ago.

SUBSTANCE IS ETERNAL

     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,     Which, teaching us, hath this exordium:     Nothing from nothing ever yet was born.     Fear holds dominion over mortality     Only because, seeing in land and sky     So much the cause whereof no wise they know,     Men think Divinities are working there.     Meantime, when once we know from nothing still     Nothing can be create, we shall divine     More clearly what we seek: those elements     From which alone all things created are,     And how accomplished by no tool of Gods.     Suppose all sprang from all things: any kind     Might take its origin from any thing,     No fixed seed required. Men from the sea     Might rise, and from the land the scaly breed,     And, fowl full fledged come bursting from the sky;     The horned cattle, the herds and all the wild     Would haunt with varying offspring tilth and waste;     Nor would the same fruits keep their olden trees,     But each might grow from any stock or limb     By chance and change. Indeed, and were there not     For each its procreant atoms, could things have     Each its unalterable mother old?     But, since produced from fixed seeds are all,     Each birth goes forth upon the shores of light     From its own stuff, from its own primal bodies.     And all from all cannot become, because     In each resides a secret power its own.     Again, why see we lavished o'er the lands     At spring the rose, at summer heat the corn,     The vines that mellow when the autumn lures,     If not because the fixed seeds of things     At their own season must together stream,     And new creations only be revealed     When the due times arrive and pregnant earth     Safely may give unto the shores of light     Her tender progenies? But if from naught     Were their becoming, they would spring abroad     Suddenly, unforeseen, in alien months,     With no primordial germs, to be preserved     From procreant unions at an adverse hour.     Nor on the mingling of the living seeds     Would space be needed for the growth of things     Were life an increment of nothing: then     The tiny babe forthwith would walk a man,     And from the turf would leap a branching tree—     Wonders unheard of; for, by Nature, each     Slowly increases from its lawful seed,     And through that increase shall conserve its kind.     Whence take the proof that things enlarge and feed     From out their proper matter. Thus it comes     That earth, without her seasons of fixed rains,     Could bear no produce such as makes us glad,     And whatsoever lives, if shut from food,     Prolongs its kind and guards its life no more.     Thus easier 'tis to hold that many things     Have primal bodies in common (as we see     The single letters common to many words)     Than aught exists without its origins.     Moreover, why should Nature not prepare     Men of a bulk to ford the seas afoot,     Or rend the mighty mountains with their hands,     Or conquer Time with length of days, if not     Because for all begotten things abides     The changeless stuff, and what from that may spring     Is fixed forevermore? Lastly we see     How far the tilled surpass the fields untilled     And to the labour of our hands return     Their more abounding crops; there are indeed     Within the earth primordial germs of things,     Which, as the ploughshare turns the fruitful clods     And kneads the mould, we quicken into birth.     Else would ye mark, without all toil of ours,     Spontaneous generations, fairer forms.     Confess then, naught from nothing can become,     Since all must have their seeds, wherefrom to grow,     Wherefrom to reach the gentle fields of air.     Hence too it comes that Nature all dissolves     Into their primal bodies again, and naught     Perishes ever to annihilation.     For, were aught mortal in its every part,     Before our eyes it might be snatched away     Unto destruction; since no force were needed     To sunder its members and undo its bands.     Whereas, of truth, because all things exist,     With seed imperishable, Nature allows     Destruction nor collapse of aught, until     Some outward force may shatter by a blow,     Or inward craft, entering its hollow cells,     Dissolve it down. And more than this, if Time,     That wastes with eld the works along the world,     Destroy entire, consuming matter all,     Whence then may Venus back to light of life     Restore the generations kind by kind?     Or how, when thus restored, may daedal Earth     Foster and plenish with her ancient food,     Which, kind by kind, she offers unto each?     Whence may the water-springs, beneath the sea,     Or inland rivers, far and wide away,     Keep the unfathomable ocean full?     And out of what does Ether feed the stars?     For lapsed years and infinite age must else     Have eat all shapes of mortal stock away:     But be it the Long Ago contained those germs,     By which this sum of things recruited lives,     Those same infallibly can never die,     Nor nothing to nothing evermore return.     And, too, the selfsame power might end alike     All things, were they not still together held     By matter eternal, shackled through its parts,     Now more, now less. A touch might be enough     To cause destruction. For the slightest force     Would loose the weft of things wherein no part     Were of imperishable stock. But now     Because the fastenings of primordial parts     Are put together diversely and stuff     Is everlasting, things abide the same     Unhurt and sure, until some power comes on     Strong to destroy the warp and woof of each:     Nothing returns to naught; but all return     At their collapse to primal forms of stuff.     Lo, the rains perish which Ether-father throws     Down to the bosom of Earth-mother; but then     Upsprings the shining grain, and boughs are green     Amid the trees, and trees themselves wax big     And lade themselves with fruits; and hence in turn     The race of man and all the wild are fed;     Hence joyful cities thrive with boys and girls;     And leafy woodlands echo with new birds;     Hence cattle, fat and drowsy, lay their bulk     Along the joyous pastures whilst the drops     Of white ooze trickle from distended bags;     Hence the young scamper on their weakling joints     Along the tender herbs, fresh hearts afrisk     With warm new milk. Thus naught of what so seems     Perishes utterly, since Nature ever     Upbuilds one thing from other, suffering naught     To come to birth but through some other's death.     And now, since I have taught that things cannot     Be born from nothing, nor the same, when born,     To nothing be recalled, doubt not my words,     Because our eyes no primal germs perceive;     For mark those bodies which, though known to be     In this our world, are yet invisible:     The winds infuriate lash our face and frame,     Unseen, and swamp huge ships and rend the clouds,     Or, eddying wildly down, bestrew the plains     With mighty trees, or scour the mountain tops     With forest-crackling blasts. Thus on they rave     With uproar shrill and ominous moan. The winds,     'Tis clear, are sightless bodies sweeping through     The sea, the lands, the clouds along the sky,     Vexing and whirling and seizing all amain;     And forth they flow and pile destruction round,     Even as the water's soft and supple bulk     Becoming a river of abounding floods,     Which a wide downpour from the lofty hills     Swells with big showers, dashes headlong down     Fragments of woodland and whole branching trees;     Nor can the solid bridges bide the shock     As on the waters whelm: the turbulent stream,     Strong with a hundred rains, beats round the piers,     Crashes with havoc, and rolls beneath its waves     Down-toppled masonry and ponderous stone,     Hurling away whatever would oppose.     Even so must move the blasts of all the winds,     Which, when they spread, like to a mighty flood,     Hither or thither, drive things on before     And hurl to ground with still renewed assault,     Or sometimes in their circling vortex seize     And bear in cones of whirlwind down the world:     The winds are sightless bodies and naught else—     Since both in works and ways they rival well     The mighty rivers, the visible in form.     Then too we know the varied smells of things     Yet never to our nostrils see them come;     With eyes we view not burning heats, nor cold,     Nor are we wont men's voices to behold.     Yet these must be corporeal at the base,     Since thus they smite the senses: naught there is     Save body, having property of touch.     And raiment, hung by surf-beat shore, grows moist,     The same, spread out before the sun, will dry;     Yet no one saw how sank the moisture in,     Nor how by heat off-driven. Thus we know,     That moisture is dispersed about in bits     Too small for eyes to see. Another case:     A ring upon the finger thins away     Along the under side, with years and suns;     The drippings from the eaves will scoop the stone;     The hooked ploughshare, though of iron, wastes     Amid the fields insidiously. We view     The rock-paved highways worn by many feet;     And at the gates the brazen statues show     Their right hands leaner from the frequent touch     Of wayfarers innumerable who greet.     We see how wearing-down hath minished these,     But just what motes depart at any time,     The envious nature of vision bars our sight.     Lastly whatever days and nature add     Little by little, constraining things to grow     In due proportion, no gaze however keen     Of these our eyes hath watched and known. No more     Can we observe what's lost at any time,     When things wax old with eld and foul decay,     Or when salt seas eat under beetling crags.     Thus Nature ever by unseen bodies works.

THE VOID

     But yet creation's neither crammed nor blocked     About by body: there's in things a void—     Which to have known will serve thee many a turn,     Nor will not leave thee wandering in doubt,     Forever searching in the sum of all,     And losing faith in these pronouncements mine.     There's place intangible, a void and room.     For were it not, things could in nowise move;     Since body's property to block and check     Would work on all and at an times the same.     Thus naught could evermore push forth and go,     Since naught elsewhere would yield a starting place.     But now through oceans, lands, and heights of heaven,     By divers causes and in divers modes,     Before our eyes we mark how much may move,     Which, finding not a void, would fail deprived     Of stir and motion; nay, would then have been     Nowise begot at all, since matter, then,     Had staid at rest, its parts together crammed.     Then too, however solid objects seem,     They yet are formed of matter mixed with void:     In rocks and caves the watery moisture seeps,     And beady drops stand out like plenteous tears;     And food finds way through every frame that lives;     The trees increase and yield the season's fruit     Because their food throughout the whole is poured,     Even from the deepest roots, through trunks and boughs;     And voices pass the solid walls and fly     Reverberant through shut doorways of a house;     And stiffening frost seeps inward to our bones.     Which but for voids for bodies to go through     'Tis clear could happen in nowise at all.     Again, why see we among objects some     Of heavier weight, but of no bulkier size?     Indeed, if in a ball of wool there be     As much of body as in lump of lead,     The two should weigh alike, since body tends     To load things downward, while the void abides,     By contrary nature, the imponderable.     Therefore, an object just as large but lighter     Declares infallibly its more of void;     Even as the heavier more of matter shows,     And how much less of vacant room inside.     That which we're seeking with sagacious quest     Exists, infallibly, commixed with things—     The void, the invisible inane.                                  Right here     I am compelled a question to expound,     Forestalling something certain folk suppose,     Lest it avail to lead thee off from truth:     Waters (they say) before the shining breed     Of the swift scaly creatures somehow give,     And straightway open sudden liquid paths,     Because the fishes leave behind them room     To which at once the yielding billows stream.     Thus things among themselves can yet be moved,     And change their place, however full the Sum—     Received opinion, wholly false forsooth.     For where can scaly creatures forward dart,     Save where the waters give them room? Again,     Where can the billows yield a way, so long     As ever the fish are powerless to go?     Thus either all bodies of motion are deprived,     Or things contain admixture of a void     Where each thing gets its start in moving on.     Lastly, where after impact two broad bodies     Suddenly spring apart, the air must crowd     The whole new void between those bodies formed;     But air, however it stream with hastening gusts,     Can yet not fill the gap at once—for first     It makes for one place, ere diffused through all.     And then, if haply any think this comes,     When bodies spring apart, because the air     Somehow condenses, wander they from truth:     For then a void is formed, where none before;     And, too, a void is filled which was before.     Nor can air be condensed in such a wise;     Nor, granting it could, without a void, I hold,     It still could not contract upon itself     And draw its parts together into one.     Wherefore, despite demur and counter-speech,     Confess thou must there is a void in things.     And still I might by many an argument     Here scrape together credence for my words.     But for the keen eye these mere footprints serve,     Whereby thou mayest know the rest thyself.     As dogs full oft with noses on the ground,     Find out the silent lairs, though hid in brush,     Of beasts, the mountain-rangers, when but once     They scent the certain footsteps of the way,     Thus thou thyself in themes like these alone     Can hunt from thought to thought, and keenly wind     Along even onward to the secret places     And drag out truth. But, if thou loiter loth     Or veer, however little, from the point,     This I can promise, Memmius, for a fact:     Such copious drafts my singing tongue shall pour     From the large well-springs of my plenished breast     That much I dread slow age will steal and coil     Along our members, and unloose the gates     Of life within us, ere for thee my verse     Hath put within thine ears the stores of proofs     At hand for one soever question broached.

NOTHING EXISTS per se EXCEPT ATOMS AND THE VOID

     But, now again to weave the tale begun,     All nature, then, as self-sustained, consists     Of twain of things: of bodies and of void     In which they're set, and where they're moved around.     For common instinct of our race declares     That body of itself exists: unless     This primal faith, deep-founded, fail us not,     Naught will there be whereunto to appeal     On things occult when seeking aught to prove     By reasonings of mind. Again, without     That place and room, which we do call the inane,     Nowhere could bodies then be set, nor go     Hither or thither at all—as shown before.     Besides, there's naught of which thou canst declare     It lives disjoined from body, shut from void—     A kind of third in nature. For whatever     Exists must be a somewhat; and the same,     If tangible, however fight and slight,     Will yet increase the count of body's sum,     With its own augmentation big or small;     But, if intangible and powerless ever     To keep a thing from passing through itself     On any side, 'twill be naught else but that     Which we do call the empty, the inane.     Again, whate'er exists, as of itself,     Must either act or suffer action on it,     Or else be that wherein things move and be:     Naught, saving body, acts, is acted on;     Naught but the inane can furnish room. And thus,     Beside the inane and bodies, is no third     Nature amid the number of all things—     Remainder none to fall at any time     Under our senses, nor be seized and seen     By any man through reasonings of mind.     Name o'er creation with what names thou wilt,     Thou'lt find but properties of those first twain,     Or see but accidents those twain produce.     A property is that which not at all     Can be disjoined and severed from a thing     Without a fatal dissolution: such,     Weight to the rocks, heat to the fire, and flow     To the wide waters, touch to corporal things,     Intangibility to the viewless void.     But state of slavery, pauperhood, and wealth,     Freedom, and war, and concord, and all else     Which come and go whilst nature stands the same,     We're wont, and rightly, to call accidents.     Even time exists not of itself; but sense     Reads out of things what happened long ago,     What presses now, and what shall follow after:     No man, we must admit, feels time itself,     Disjoined from motion and repose of things.     Thus, when they say there "is" the ravishment     Of Princess Helen, "is" the siege and sack     Of Trojan Town, look out, they force us not     To admit these acts existent by themselves,     Merely because those races of mankind     (Of whom these acts were accidents) long since     Irrevocable age has borne away:     For all past actions may be said to be     But accidents, in one way, of mankind,—     In other, of some region of the world.     Add, too, had been no matter, and no room     Wherein all things go on, the fire of love     Upblown by that fair form, the glowing coal     Under the Phrygian Alexander's breast,     Had ne'er enkindled that renowned strife     Of savage war, nor had the wooden horse     Involved in flames old Pergama, by a birth     At midnight of a brood of the Hellenes.     And thus thou canst remark that every act     At bottom exists not of itself, nor is     As body is, nor has like name with void;     But rather of sort more fitly to be called     An accident of body, and of place     Wherein all things go on.