On the Nature of Things. Тит Лукреций Кар

from true reason to have lapsed.

           Of whom, chief leader to do battle, comes

           That Heraclitus, famous for dark speech

           Among the silly, not the serious Greeks

           Who search for truth. For dolts are ever prone

           That to bewonder and adore which hides

           Beneath distorted words, holding that true

           Which sweetly tickles in their stupid ears,

           Or which is rouged in finely finished phrase.

           For how, I ask, can things so varied be,

           If formed of fire, single and pure? No whit

           'Twould help for fire to be condensed or thinned,

           If all the parts of fire did still preserve

           But fire's own nature, seen before in gross.

           The heat were keener with the parts compressed,

           Milder, again, when severed or dispersed—

           And more than this thou canst conceive of naught

           That from such causes could become; much less

           Might earth's variety of things be born

           From any fires soever, dense or rare.

           This too: if they suppose a void in things,

           Then fires can be condensed and still left rare;

           But since they see such opposites of thought

           Rising against them, and are loath to leave

           An unmixed void in things, they fear the steep

           And lose the road of truth. Nor do they see,

           That, if from things we take away the void,

           All things are then condensed, and out of all

           One body made, which has no power to dart

           Swiftly from out itself not anything—

           As throws the fire its light and warmth around,

           Giving thee proof its parts are not compact.

           But if perhaps they think, in other wise,

           Fires through their combinations can be quenched

           And change their substance, very well: behold,

           If fire shall spare to do so in no part,

           Then heat will perish utterly and all,

           And out of nothing would the world be formed.

           For change in anything from out its bounds

           Means instant death of that which was before;

           And thus a somewhat must persist unharmed

           Amid the world, lest all return to naught,

           And, born from naught, abundance thrive anew.

           Now since indeed there are those surest bodies

           Which keep their nature evermore the same,

           Upon whose going out and coming in

           And changed order things their nature change,

           And all corporeal substances transformed,

           'Tis thine to know those primal bodies, then,

           Are not of fire. For 'twere of no avail

           Should some depart and go away, and some

           Be added new, and some be changed in order,

           If still all kept their nature of old heat:

           For whatsoever they created then

           Would still in any case be only fire.

           The truth, I fancy, this: bodies there are

           Whose clashings, motions, order, posture, shapes

           Produce the fire and which, by order changed,

           Do change the nature of the thing produced,

           And are thereafter nothing like to fire

           Nor whatso else has power to send its bodies

           With impact touching on the senses' touch.

           Again, to say that all things are but fire

           And no true thing in number of all things

           Exists but fire, as this same fellow says,

           Seems crazed folly. For the man himself

           Against the senses by the senses fights,

           And hews at that through which is all belief,

           Through which indeed unto himself is known

           The thing he calls the fire. For, though he thinks

           The senses truly can perceive the fire,

           He thinks they cannot as regards all else,

           Which still are palpably as clear to sense—

           To me a thought inept and crazy too.

           For whither shall we make appeal? for what

           More certain than our senses can there be

           Whereby to mark asunder error and truth?

           Besides, why rather do away with all,

           And wish to allow heat only, then deny

           The fire and still allow all else to be?—

           Alike the madness either way it seems.

           Thus whosoe'er have held the stuff of things

           To be but fire, and out of fire the sum,

           And whosoever have constituted air

           As first beginning of begotten things,

           And all whoever have held that of itself

           Water alone contrives things, or that earth

           Createth all and changes things anew

           To divers natures, mightily they seem

           A long way to have wandered from the truth.

           Add, too, whoever make the primal stuff

           Twofold, by joining air to fire, and earth

           To water; add who deem that things can grow

           Out of the four—fire, earth, and breath, and rain;

           As first Empedocles of Acragas,

           Whom that three-cornered isle of all the lands

           Bore on her coasts, around which flows and flows

           In mighty bend and bay the Ionic seas,

           Splashing the brine from off their gray-green waves.

           Here, billowing onward through the narrow straits,

           Swift ocean cuts her boundaries from the shores

           Of the Italic mainland.