inversis quæ sub verbis latitantia cernunt,
veraque constituunt quæ belle tangere possunt
auris et lepido quæ sunt fucata sonore.’[44]
119. As the purpose of the poem of Lucretius is the establishment of the very opposite of our present theme, we must consider a good deal more of his work than the mere properties of atoms. Lucretius tells us that his object is to dispel the fear of the gods, which he supposes to arise simply from the fact that there are so many things which men do not yet understand, and therefore imagine to be effected by divine power.
Religion, which crushes human life prostrate upon earth, is, he says, now put under foot; and the great victory achieved by his Greek instructor over the immeasurable universe (in finding what can and what cannot come into being) brings us level with heaven.
His followers are not to fancy that there is any sin in this; on the contrary, religion has perpetually been the cause of sinful deeds. There is, however, danger of their relapse, for the terror-speaking seers may once more overcome them. But if men could only be convinced that the soul is born and perishes with us, then they would be able to take their ease, and withstand alike religious scruples and threatenings of the seers. For this purpose we must find out what mind and soul consist of, and how everything on earth proceeds; and if we can do this, we may, of course, dispense with the gods.
120. First, then, nothing comes from nothing, which seems to be meant in the sense that there is a physical cause for everything; at least all the examples which are adduced in proof of the statement are mere instances of what might be conceived to happen if there were no fixed determining physical law or cause. But the author is obscure on this point, for he sometimes makes us inclined to think that he is virtually only asserting the eternal, unchangeable, existence of the atom,—the ‘first beginning of things.’
As a corollary to this, of course, nature does not annihilate things, but dissolves them back into their first bodies. The same negative proof is here attempted. Nothing is lost, but nature can beget nothing till she is recruited by the death of something else. Then, to reconcile the reader to the invisibility of these first bodies, he is shown how nature works by invisible things, as wind and moisture; how marriage-rings and paving-stones, ploughshares and statues, are worn away without the loss of any visible particles. Nature, therefore, works by unseen bodies. Smell, heat, cold, etc., must consist of a bodily nature, because they affect the senses; for nothing but body can touch and be touched.
121. But, SECONDLY, there is also void in things, else they would be jammed together, and unable to move. It is false to say that things may move in a plenum: as, when a fish presses on, it leaves room behind it, into which the water may stream; for on what side can the scaly creature move forwards unless the waters have first made room; and on what side can the waters give place so long as the fish cannot move? (This of course is metaphysics, and is altogether absurd. It is the old story of the immovable body receiving the irresistible blow.) Hence there cannot be motion unless there be void to allow of a start. Dripping of water in caves, the passage of food throughout the whole of the body of an animal, the fact that buds and fruit of trees are nourished from the root, voices heard through walls, cold penetrating the very bones, all are proofs that there is void as well as body. Also when one thing is as large as another, but yet lighter, there must be more void in it.
122. Third. There can be no third thing besides body and void. For if it be to the smallest extent tangible, it is body; if not, it is void.