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<div style="background:#fff;border:#bbb dashed 1px;padding:5px"><a href="http://en.citatepedia.ro/comments.php?id=450282" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"><div style="margin:10px 0"><strong>Book I - Part 05 - Character Of The Atoms</strong></div><div style="margin:10px 0">Bodies, again, <br>Are partly primal germs of things, and partly <br>Unions deriving from the primal germs. <br>And those which are the primal germs of things <br>No power can quench; for in the end they conquer <br>By their own solidness; though hard it be <br>To think that aught in things has solid frame; <br>For lightnings pass, no less than voice and shout, <br>Through hedging walls of houses, and the iron <br>White-dazzles in the fire, and rocks will burn <br>With exhalations fierce and burst asunder. <br>Totters the rigid gold dissolved in heat; <br>The ice of bronze melts conquered in the flame; <br>Warmth and the piercing cold through silver seep, <br>Since, with the cups held rightly in the hand, <br>We oft feel both, as from above is poured <br>The dew of waters between their shining sides: <br>So true it is no solid form is found. <br>But yet because true reason and nature of things <br>Constrain us, come, whilst in few verses now <br>I disentangle how there still exist <br>Bodies of solid, everlasting frame- <br>The seeds of things, the primal germs we teach, <br>Whence all creation around us came to be. <br>First since we know a twofold nature exists, <br>Of things, both twain and utterly unlike- <br>Body, and place in which an things go on- <br>Then each must be both for and through itself, <br>And all unmixed: where'er be empty space, <br>There body's not; and so where body bides, <br>There not at an exists the void inane. <br>Thus primal bodies are solid, without a void. <br>But since there's void in all begotten things, <br>All solid matter must be round the same; <br>Nor, by true reason canst thou prove aught hides <br>And holds a void within its body, unless <br>Thou grant what holds it be a solid. Know, <br>That which can hold a void of things within <br>Can be naught else than matter in union knit. <br>Thus matter, consisting of a solid frame, <br>Hath power to be eternal, though all else, <br>Though all creation, be dissolved away. <br>Again, were naught of empty and inane, <br>The world were then a solid; as, without <br>Some certain bodies to fill the places held, <br>The world that is were but a vacant void. <br>And so, infallibly, alternate-wise <br>Body and void are still distinguished, <br>Since nature knows no wholly full nor void. <br>There are, then, certain bodies, possessed of power <br>To vary forever the empty and the full; <br>And these can nor be sundered from without <br>By beats and blows, nor from within be torn <br>By penetration, nor be overthrown <br>By any assault soever through the world- <br>For without void, naught can be crushed, it seems, <br>Nor broken, nor severed by a cut in twain, <br>Nor can it take the damp, or seeping cold <br>Or piercing fire, those old destroyers three; <br>But the more void within a thing, the more <br>Entirely it totters at their sure assault. <br>Thus if first bodies be, as I have taught, <br>Solid, without a void, they must be then <br>Eternal; and, if matter ne'er had been <br>Eternal, long ere now had all things gone <br>Back into nothing utterly, and all <br>We see around from nothing had been born- <br>But since I taught above that naught can be <br>From naught created, nor the once begotten <br>To naught be summoned back, these primal germs <br>Must have an immortality of frame. <br>And into these must each thing be resolved, <br>When comes its supreme hour, that thus there be <br>At hand the stuff for plenishing the world. </div><div style="margin:10px 0">So primal germs have solid singleness <br>Nor otherwise could they have been conserved <br>Through aeons and infinity of time <br>For the replenishment of wasted worlds. </div><div style="margin:10px 0">Once more, if Nature had given a scope for things <br>To be forever broken more and more, <br>By now the bodies of matter would have been <br>So far reduced by breakings in old days <br>That from them nothing could, at season fixed, <br>Be born, and arrive its prime and of life. <br>For, lo, each thing is quicker marred than made; <br>And so what'er the long infinitude <br>Of days and all fore-passed time would now <br>By this have broken and ruined and dissolved, <br>That same could ne'er in all remaining time <br>Be builded up for plenishing the world. <br>But mark: infallibly a fixed bound <br>Remaineth stablished 'gainst their breaking down; <br>Since we behold each thing soever renewed, <br>And unto all, their seasons, after their kind, <br>Wherein they arrive the flower of their age. </div><div style="margin:10px 0">Again, if bounds have not been set against <br>The breaking down of this corporeal world, <br>Yet must all bodies of whatever things <br>Have still endured from everlasting time <br>Unto this present, as not yet assailed <br>By shocks of peril. But because the same <br>Are, to thy thinking, of a nature frail, <br>It ill accords that thus they could remain <br>(As thus they do) through everlasting time, <br>Vexed through the ages (as indeed they are) <br>By the innumerable blows of chance. </div><div style="margin:10px 0">So in our programme of creation, mark <br>How 'tis that, though the bodies of all stuff <br>The ways whereby some things are fashioned soft- <br>Air, water, earth, and fiery exhalations- <br>And by what force they function and go on: <br>The fact is founded in the void of things. <br>But if the primal germs themselves be soft, <br>Reason cannot be brought to bear to show <br>The ways whereby may be created these <br>Great crags of basalt and the during iron; <br>For their whole nature will profoundly lack <br>The first foundations of a solid frame. <br>But powerful in old simplicity, <br>Abide the solid, the primeval germs; <br>And by their combinations more condensed, <br>All objects can be tightly knit and bound <br>And made to show unconquerable strength. <br>Again, since all things kind by kind obtain <br>Fixed bounds of growing and conserving life; <br>Since Nature hath inviolably decreed <br>What each can do, what each can never do; <br>Since naught is changed, but all things so abide <br>That ever the variegated birds reveal <br>The spots or stripes peculiar to their kind, <br>Spring after spring: thus surely all that is <br>Must be composed of matter immutable. <br>For if the primal germs in any wise <br>Were open to conquest and to change, 'twould be <br>Uncertain also what could come to birth <br>And what could not, and by what law to each <br>Its scope prescribed, its boundary stone that clings <br>So deep in Time. Nor could the generations <br>Kind after kind so often reproduce <br>The nature, habits, motions, ways of life, <br>Of their progenitors. <br>And then again, <br>Since there is ever an extreme bounding point </div><div style="margin:10px 0">Of that first body which our senses now <br>Cannot perceive: That bounding point indeed <br>Exists without all parts, a minimum <br>Of nature, nor was e'er a thing apart, <br>As of itself,- nor shall hereafter be, <br>Since 'tis itself still parcel of another, <br>A first and single part, whence other parts <br>And others similar in order lie <br>In a packed phalanx, filling to the full <br>The nature of first body: being thus <br>Not self-existent, they must cleave to that <br>From which in nowise they can sundered be. <br>So primal germs have solid singleness, <br>Which tightly packed and closely joined cohere <br>By virtue of their minim particles- <br>No compound by mere union of the same; <br>But strong in their eternal singleness, <br>Nature, reserving them as seeds for things, <br>Permitteth naught of rupture or decrease. </div><div style="margin:10px 0">Moreover, were there not a minimum, <br>The smallest bodies would have infinites, <br>Since then a half-of-half could still be halved, <br>With limitless division less and less. <br>Then what the difference 'twixt the sum and least? <br>None: for however infinite the sum, <br>Yet even the smallest would consist the same <br>Of infinite parts. But since true reason here <br>Protests, denying that the mind can think it, <br>Convinced thou must confess such things there are <br>As have no parts, the minimums of nature. <br>And since these are, likewise confess thou must <br>That primal bodies are solid and eterne. <br>Again, if Nature, creatress of all things, <br>Were wont to force all things to be resolved <br>Unto least parts, then would she not avail <br>To reproduce from out them anything; <br>Because whate'er is not endowed with parts <br>Cannot possess those properties required <br>Of generative stuff- divers connections, <br>Weights, blows, encounters, motions, whereby things <br>Forevermore have being and go on.</div><div style="margin:10px 0"><br /></a><br />poem by <a href="http://en.citatepedia.ro/by.php?a=Lucretius">Lucretius</a><div class=q>
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<script type="text/javascript" src="//s7.addthis.com/js/300/addthis_widget.js#pubid=citatepedia" async="async"></script><div style="display:inline-block" class="addthis_sharing_toolbox" data-url="http://en.citatepedia.ro/comments.php?id=450282" data-title="Book I - Part 05 - Character Of The Atoms de Lucretius" data-description="Bodies, again, 
Are partly primal germs of things, and partly 
Unions deriving from the primal germs. 
And those which are the primal germs of things 
No power can quench; for in the end they conquer 
By their own solidness; though hard it be 
To ..."></div>
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