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

  He does not know that all things in decay

  By slow degrees are moving towards their end

  Worn by the age-old passage of the years.

  BOOK THREE

  You, who from so great darkness could uplift

  So clear a light, lighting the joys of life,

  You, glory of the Greeks, I follow you

  And in your footprints plant my footsteps firm,

  Not in desire of rivalry, but love

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  Drives me to yearn to copy you. The swallow

  Can’t vie with swans. What would a trembling kid

  Do in contest with a strong swift horse?

  You, father, have revealed the truth, and you

  A father’s precepts gave us in your pages.

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  As bees in flowery glades sip every bloom,

  So we, like them, feed on your golden words,

  Golden, most worthy of eternal life.

  For once your reason, born of mind divine,

  Starts to proclaim the nature of the world

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  The terrors of the mind flee all away,

  The walls of heaven open, and through the void

  Immeasurable, the truth of things I see.

  The gods appear now and their quiet abodes

  Which no winds ever shake, nor any rain

  Falls on them from dark clouds, nor ever snow

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  Congealed with bitter frost with its white fall

  Mars them; but always ever-cloudless air

  Enfolds and smiles on them with bounteous light.

  There nature everything supplies, and there

  Through all the length of ages nothing comes

  To vex the tranquil tenor of their minds.

  But in contrast nowhere at all appear

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  The halls of Acheron, though earth no bar

  Opposes, but lets all be clearly seen

  That moves beneath our feet throughout the void.

  And now from all these things delight and joy,

  As it were divine, takes hold of me, and awe

  That by your power nature so manifest

  Lies open and in every part displayed.

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  And since I have taught the beginnings of all things,

  What kind they are, and how in varying forms

  Of their own accord, driven by everlasting

  Motion, they fly, and how all things from them

  Can be created, next and following this

  The nature of mind and spirit by my verses

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  Must be made clear, and headlong out of doors

  That fear of Hell be thrown, which from its depths

  Disquiets the life of man, suffusing all

  With the blackness of death, and leaving no delights

  Pure and unsullied. This man it persuades

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  To break the bonds of friendship and another

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  To violate honour, and in a word

  To turn all morals upside down. Traitors

  To country and to parents men have been

  For fear, the appalling fear, of Acheron.

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  For when men say a life of infamy

  And foul diseases is more terrible

  Than death’s deep pit, and that they know that blood

  Is what the spirit is made of, or even wind,

  (If so the fancy takes them) and that they have

  No need of what my reasoning tells them, then

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  I’ll show you that they speak thus seeking praise,

  Boasting, and not because the matter’s proved.

  These men in exile, banished from their homes,

  Far from the sight of men, stained by foul charges,

  Cursed, in a word, by every misery,

  Yet live; and despite their words they sacrifice

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  To their ancestral gods, they slay black cattle,

  They send oblations to the ghosts below,

  And in their bitter straits they turn their minds

  More keenly now than ever to religion.

  Thus, when in perils and adversity

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  A man has fallen, it’s more useful then

  To look at him and easier to know him.

  For only then from out the heart’s deep core

  True voices rise, the mask’s stripped off, the man

  Remains. Greed and blind lust for fame

  Moreover, which compel men to transgress

  The bounds of law, and often times make them,

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  Allies and ministers of crime, strive night and day

  With toil and sweat to gain the heights of power,

  These wounds of life in no small part are fed

  By fear of death. For ’tis the common view

  That shameful scorn and bitter poverty

  Are far removed from a sweet and stable life,

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  And, as it were, are simply lingering

  Before the gates of death. From which, when men

  Driven by groundless fear desire to flee

  And to remove themselves far, far away,

  By civil strife they make wealth for themselves

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  And heap up riches, murder upon murder

  Piling in greed. A brother’s death gives joy.

  A kinsman’s board supplies both hate and fear.

  By similar reasoning, born of the same fear,

  Envy consumes them; that he before their eyes

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  Gets power, is known, parades in pomp and show,

  While they the while in darkness and in filth

  Lie wallowing—that’s their complaint, you see!

  Some die to get a statue and a name.

  And often too, crazed by the fear of death,

  Such hate of life and light possesses them

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  That their own deaths they plan, with sorrowing heart,

  Forgetting that this fear begets their woes.

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  For we, like children frightened of the dark,

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  Are sometimes frightened in the light—of things

  No more to be feared than fears that in the dark

  Distress a child, thinking they may come true.

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  Therefore this terror and darkness of the mind

  Not by the sun’s rays, nor the bright shafts of day,

  Must be dispersed, as is most necessary,

  But by the face of nature and her laws.

  First I say that the mind, which we often call

  The intelligence, in which is situated

  The understanding and the government

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  Of life, is a part of man, no less than hands

  And feet and eyes are part of the living being,

  Though many wise philosophers have thought

  That it is not placed in a definite part, but is

  A sort of vital essence of the body,

  Called harmony by the Greeks, which makes us live

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  Endowed with feeling, though the intelligence

  Is not in any part; as when the body

  Is said to be in good health, but health is not

  A part of it, so in no definite place

  They place the mind—and here they plainly err

  Exceedingly, in many different ways.

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  For often the body, which we see, is sick

  And yet in another part, which we cannot see,

  We’re happy. And conversely, in its turn,

  The opposite applies, as when a man

  Though sick in mind in body flourishes.

  Let’s take another case—a man hurts his foot,

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  It doesn’t mean he gets a headache too!

  Again, when limbs are given to gentle sleep

&nbs
p; And body without senses lies outstretched,

  There’s something in us all the time that feels

  In many ways, and takes into itself

  Movements of pleasure and the heart’s vain cares.

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  Next, that the spirit also you may know

  Lies in our limbs, and that it is not harmony

  That makes the body feel, firstly it happens

  That if a great part of the body be taken away

  Yet oft within our limbs life still remains.

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  Again, when a few particles of heat

  Have fled abroad, and outwards through the mouth

  Air is expelled, at once this same spirit

  Deserts the veins and leaves the bones. From this

  You will recognize that not all particles

  Work the same way or support life equally.

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  But those that are seeds of wind and warming heat

  Secure that life still lingers in our limbs.

  Therefore there is within the body heat

  And vital wind which at the point of death

  Deserts our frame and causes us to die.

  Well then, since we have recognized that mind

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  And spirit are in some way a part of man,

  Give back the name of harmony, brought down

  To those musicians from high Helicon;

  Maybe they found it somewhere else, and gave

  The name to something till then nameless. Anyway

  Whatever it is, let them keep it. And you

  Please listen to the rest of what I say.

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  I tell you now that mind and spirit are

  Conjoined and in one single nature fixed,

  But head and master as it were of all

  The body, is the understanding, which we call

  Mind and intelligence. It has its seat

  Placed in the middle region of the breast.

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  For here throb fear and terror, here abides

  Sweet melting joy, and therefore intelligence

  And mind are. And the rest of the spirit,

  Through the whole body diffused, obeys the will

  Of mind and working of intelligence.

  Mind by itself alone has sense, alone

  Rejoices for itself, when nothing moves

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  Spirit or body. And just as when our head

  Or eye is hurt by an attack of pain,

  The whole body is not tormented, so

  The mind sometimes itself alone is hurt

  Or thrills with joy, while the spirit’s other part

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  Throughout our limbs and frame remains unmoved.

  But when the mind is strongly gripped by fear

  We see the whole spirit throughout the frame

  Share the same feeling; we sweat, grow pale,

  Our speech is broken, the voice dies away,

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  Our eyes grow dark, our ears are filled with noise,

  Our limbs give way; in short, through mental terror

  We see men fall to the ground. From this we know

  That spirit is linked with mind; when struck by mind

  The spirit drives the body and compels it.

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  This reasoning likewise shows that mind and spirit

  Are bodily, for when we see that limbs are moved,

  The body snatched from sleep, the countenance

  Changed, the whole man ruled and steered, a thing

  Impossible without touch, and touch in turn

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  Impossible without body, must we not

  Admit that mind and spirit are bodily?

  Moreover you can see the mind to suffer

  Along with the body, and to share its feeling.

  If the grim power of a javelin,

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  Driven deep into the bones and sinews, fails

  To take the life, yet weakness follows, then

  A fall to the ground, and on the ground a storm

  In the mind, and sometimes as it were

  A faint desire to rise. The nature of mind

  Must therefore in itself be bodily,

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  Since blows upon the body make it suffer.

  This mind, I now propose to explain to you,

  What kind of thing it is, and whence derived.

  Most delicate it is I say and formed

  Of atoms most minute. That this is so

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  The following example may convince you.

  Nothing is done so swiftly as the mind

  Determines it to be done, and acts itself;

  More quickly then the mind bestirs itself

  Than anything else that comes before our eyes;

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  But what is so readily moved must needs consist

  Of seeds extremely round and most minute

  So that a force though very small can move them.

  Water moves easily and flows with little force

  Because it is formed of smooth and rolling shapes.

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  Honey conversely has more stability,

  Its fluid is more sluggish and its movement

  Slow, because the whole mass of its matter

  Coheres more slowly, since it is not made

  Of atoms so smooth and delicate and round.

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  Take poppy seeds, a big high heap of them,

  A breath of wind can make the top slide down,

  But take a heap of stones or ears of wheat,

  It cannot move them. So, you see, so far

  As atoms are extremely small and smooth,

  They have the power of motion; but heavy things

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  And things that are rough have more stability.

  Now therefore, since we have found the mind to be

  Extremely mobile, of necessity

  It must consist of atoms extremely small

  And smooth and round. If this be known to you

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  My friend, you’ll find it helps in many ways,

  And you will call it valuable and useful.

  This also shows its nature and how fine

  Its texture is, and how minute a space

  It would occupy if it could be massed together—

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  As soon as death’s calm quiet takes a man

  And mind and spirit have departed, then

  Nothing from all the body can you see

  Diminished, not in look nor weight, but death

  Presents it all, less only sense and warmth.

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  Therefore the entire spirit must consist

  Of seeds extremely small, through veins, flesh, sinews,

  Woven; wherefore, when all of it has left

  The body, none the less the shape of limbs

  Remains intact; no whit of weight is lost.

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  The bouquet of wine is an example, or

  The scent of ointment, or the flavour of something;

  They disappear, but all the same no whit

  Smaller the thing seems to our eyes, nor less

  Is it in weight; no wonder, since minute

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  Seeds are what make the flavour and the scent.

  Wherefore again and yet again I say

  The nature of the mind and spirit must

  Of seeds extremely small be constituted,

  Since when it flees it takes no weight away.

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  But do not suppose that this nature is single.

  When a man dies, a kind of thin breath, mixed

  With heat, deserts him, and the heat draws air

  Along with it. Nor is there any heat

  That is not mixed with air, for since its nature

  Is rarefied, then of necessity

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  First elements of air must needs move through
it.

  Already therefore we have found that mind

  Is threefold; but these three are not enough

  To engender feeling, since no one of them

  Is able to make the motions that bring sense,

  Still less the thoughts that come into our minds.

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  Therefore a fourth thing of some kind must be

  Added, and this is wholly without name.

  Nothing exists more easily moved than this,

  Nor thinner nor made of elements more small

  And smooth, and this first transmits through our limbs

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  Sense-giving motions. For this first is moved

  Being smallest, next heat and the blind power of wind

  Take on the movement, then the air, then everything

  Is moved, the blood is stirred, the flesh is thrilled

  All through with feeling, bones and marrow feel

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  Pleasure perhaps, or pleasure’s opposite.

  Nor can pain penetrate thus far, or violent ill,

  But that they cause so much disquiet that

  No place is left for life, the spirit flees

  Dispersed through all the channels of the body.

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  But usually, as it were at the body’s surface

  These movements end; so we keep hold on life.

  Now when I long to explain how these things are

  Mingled among themselves, and in what ways

  Arranged they are active, then against my will

  The poverty of our language holds me back.

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  But the chief points I’ll touch on, as best I can.

  The first beginnings move among themselves

  So closely that no single one of them

  Is separate or has power to act alone

  Divided from the rest, but many of them

  Compose together a kind of single body.

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  As in the flesh of any animal

  There is a certain scent and heat and flavour

  Yet from all these one body is made complete,

  So heat and air and the blind power of wind

  Mixed form one nature, with that moving force

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  Which from itself dispenses the beginning of motion,

  The sense-bringer, from which through all the body

  Movement first begins. For deep deep down

  This nature hidden lies, and far beneath;

  Nothing so deep in all our body lies,

  The spirit of the very spirit itself.

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  Just as, mixed in our limbs and all our body,

  The force of mind and power of spirit lies hid,

  Made as it is of few small elements,

  So does this nameless force made of minute

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  Atoms lie hid, spirit of spirit, and lord

  Of all the body. So likewise must wind

  And air and heat all mingled interact

  Throughout our limbs, one yielding place to another