On the Nature of Things. Тит Лукреций Кар

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,