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<div style="background:#fff;border:#bbb dashed 1px;padding:5px"><a href="http://en.citatepedia.ro/comments.php?id=450286" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"><div style="margin:10px 0"><strong>Book II - Part 02 - Atomic Motions</strong></div><div style="margin:10px 0">Now come: I will untangle for thy steps <br>Now by what motions the begetting bodies <br>Of the world-stuff beget the varied world, <br>And then forever resolve it when begot, <br>And by what force they are constrained to this, <br>And what the speed appointed unto them <br>Wherewith to travel down the vast inane: <br>Do thou remember to yield thee to my words. <br>For truly matter coheres not, crowds not tight, <br>Since we behold each thing to wane away, <br>And we observe how all flows on and off, <br>As 'twere, with age-old time, and from our eyes <br>How eld withdraws each object at the end, <br>Albeit the sum is seen to bide the same, <br>Unharmed, because these motes that leave each thing <br>Diminish what they part from, but endow <br>With increase those to which in turn they come, <br>Constraining these to wither in old age, <br>And those to flower at the prime (and yet <br>Biding not long among them). Thus the sum <br>Forever is replenished, and we live <br>As mortals by eternal give and take. <br>The nations wax, the nations wane away; <br>In a brief space the generations pass, <br>And like to runners hand the lamp of life <br>One unto other. <br>But if thou believe <br>That the primordial germs of things can stop, <br>And in their stopping give new motions birth, <br>Afar thou wanderest from the road of truth. <br>For since they wander through the void inane, <br>All the primordial germs of things must needs <br>Be borne along, either by weight their own, <br>Or haply by another's blow without. <br>For, when, in their incessancy so oft <br>They meet and clash, it comes to pass amain <br>They leap asunder, face to face: not strange- <br>Being most hard, and solid in their weights, <br>And naught opposing motion, from behind. <br>And that more clearly thou perceive how all <br>These mites of matter are darted round about, <br>Recall to mind how nowhere in the sum <br>Of All exists a bottom,- nowhere is <br>A realm of rest for primal bodies; since <br>(As amply shown and proved by reason sure) <br>Space has no bound nor measure, and extends <br>Unmetered forth in all directions round. <br>Since this stands certain, thus 'tis out of doubt <br>No rest is rendered to the primal bodies <br>Along the unfathomable inane; but rather, <br>Inveterately plied by motions mixed, <br>Some, at their jamming, bound aback and leave <br>Huge gaps between, and some from off the blow <br>Are hurried about with spaces small between. <br>And all which, brought together with slight gaps, <br>In more condensed union bound aback, <br>Linked by their own all intertangled shapes,- <br>These form the irrefragable roots of rocks <br>And the brute bulks of iron, and what else <br>Is of their kind... <br>The rest leap far asunder, far recoil, <br>Leaving huge gaps between: and these supply <br>For us thin air and splendour-lights of the sun. <br>And many besides wander the mighty void- <br>Cast back from unions of existing things, <br>Nowhere accepted in the universe, <br>And nowise linked in motions to the rest. <br>And of this fact (as I record it here) <br>An image, a type goes on before our eyes <br>Present each moment; for behold whenever <br>The sun's light and the rays, let in, pour down <br>Across dark halls of houses: thou wilt see <br>The many mites in many a manner mixed <br>Amid a void in the very light of the rays, <br>And battling on, as in eternal strife, <br>And in battalions contending without halt, <br>In meetings, partings, harried up and down. <br>From this thou mayest conjecture of what sort <br>The ceaseless tossing of primordial seeds <br>Amid the mightier void- at least so far <br>As small affair can for a vaster serve, <br>And by example put thee on the spoor <br>Of knowledge. For this reason too 'tis fit <br>Thou turn thy mind the more unto these bodies <br>Which here are witnessed tumbling in the light: <br>Namely, because such tumblings are a sign <br>That motions also of the primal stuff <br>Secret and viewless lurk beneath, behind. <br>For thou wilt mark here many a speck, impelled <br>By viewless blows, to change its little course, <br>And beaten backwards to return again, <br>Hither and thither in all directions round. <br>Lo, all their shifting movement is of old, <br>From the primeval atoms; for the same <br>Primordial seeds of things first move of self, <br>And then those bodies built of unions small <br>And nearest, as it were, unto the powers <br>Of the primeval atoms, are stirred up <br>By impulse of those atoms' unseen blows, <br>And these thereafter goad the next in size; <br>Thus motion ascends from the primevals on, <br>And stage by stage emerges to our sense, <br>Until those objects also move which we <br>Can mark in sunbeams, though it not appears <br>What blows do urge them. <br>Herein wonder not <br>How 'tis that, while the seeds of things are all <br>Moving forever, the sum yet seems to stand <br>Supremely still, except in cases where <br>A thing shows motion of its frame as whole. <br>For far beneath the ken of senses lies <br>The nature of those ultimates of the world; <br>And so, since those themselves thou canst not see, <br>Their motion also must they veil from men- <br>For mark, indeed, how things we can see, oft <br>Yet hide their motions, when afar from us <br>Along the distant landscape. Often thus, <br>Upon a hillside will the woolly flocks <br>Be cropping their goodly food and creeping about <br>Whither the summons of the grass, begemmed <br>With the fresh dew, is calling, and the lambs <br>Well filled, are frisking, locking horns in sport: <br>Yet all for us seem blurred and blent afar- <br>A glint of white at rest on a green hill. <br>Again, when mighty legions, marching round, <br>Fill all the quarters of the plains below, <br>Rousing a mimic warfare, there the sheen <br>Shoots up the sky, and all the fields about <br>Glitter with brass, and from beneath, a sound <br>Goes forth from feet of stalwart soldiery, <br>And mountain walls, smote by the shouting, send <br>The voices onward to the stars of heaven, <br>And hither and thither darts the cavalry, <br>And of a sudden down the midmost fields <br>Charges with onset stout enough to rock <br>The solid earth: and yet some post there is <br>Up the high mountains, viewed from which they seem <br>To stand- a gleam at rest along the plains. </div><div style="margin:10px 0">Now what the speed to matter's atoms given <br>Thou mayest in few, my Memmius, learn from this: <br>When first the dawn is sprinkling with new light <br>The lands, and all the breed of birds abroad <br>Flit round the trackless forests, with liquid notes <br>Filling the regions along the mellow air, <br>We see 'tis forthwith manifest to man <br>How suddenly the risen sun is wont <br>At such an hour to overspread and clothe <br>The whole with its own splendour; but the sun's <br>Warm exhalations and this serene light <br>Travel not down an empty void; and thus <br>They are compelled more slowly to advance, <br>Whilst, as it were, they cleave the waves of air; <br>Nor one by one travel these particles <br>Of the warm exhalations, but are all <br>Entangled and enmassed, whereby at once <br>Each is restrained by each, and from without <br>Checked, till compelled more slowly to advance. <br>But the primordial atoms with their old <br>Simple solidity, when forth they travel <br>Along the empty void, all undelayed <br>By aught outside them there, and they, each one <br>Being one unit from nature of its parts, <br>Are borne to that one place on which they strive <br>Still to lay hold, must then, beyond a doubt, <br>Outstrip in speed, and be more swiftly borne <br>Than light of sun, and over regions rush, <br>Of space much vaster, in the self-same time <br>The sun's effulgence widens round the sky. </div><div style="margin:10px 0">Nor to pursue the atoms one by one, <br>To see the law whereby each thing goes on. <br>But some men, ignorant of matter, think, <br>Opposing this, that not without the gods, <br>In such adjustment to our human ways, <br>Can Nature change the seasons of the years, <br>And bring to birth the grains and all of else <br>To which divine Delight, the guide of life, <br>Persuades mortality and leads it on, <br>That, through her artful blandishments of love, <br>It propagate the generations still, <br>Lest humankind should perish. When they feign <br>That gods have stablished all things but for man, <br>They seem in all ways mightily to lapse <br>From reason's truth: for ev'n if ne'er I knew <br>What seeds primordial are, yet would I dare <br>This to affirm, ev'n from deep judgment based <br>Upon the ways and conduct of the skies- <br>This to maintain by many a fact besides- <br>That in no wise the nature of the world <br>For us was builded by a power divine- <br>So great the faults it stands encumbered with: <br>The which, my Memmius, later on, for thee <br>We will clear up. Now as to what remains <br>Concerning motions we'll unfold our thought. <br>Now is the place, meseems, in these affairs <br>To prove for thee this too: nothing corporeal <br>Of its own force can e'er be upward borne, <br>Or upward go- nor let the bodies of flames <br>Deceive thee here: for they engendered are <br>With urge to upwards, taking thus increase, <br>Whereby grow upwards shining grains and trees, <br>Though all the weight within them downward bears. <br>Nor, when the fires will leap from under round <br>The roofs of houses, and swift flame laps up <br>Timber and beam, 'tis then to be supposed <br>They act of own accord, no force beneath <br>To urge them up. 'Tis thus that blood, discharged <br>From out our bodies, spurts its jets aloft <br>And spatters gore. And hast thou never marked <br>With what a force the water will disgorge <br>Timber and beam? The deeper, straight and down, <br>We push them in, and, many though we be, <br>The more we press with main and toil, the more <br>The water vomits up and flings them back, <br>That, more than half their length, they there emerge, <br>Rebounding. Yet we never doubt, meseems, <br>That all the weight within them downward bears <br>Through empty void. Well, in like manner, flames <br>Ought also to be able, when pressed out, <br>Through winds of air to rise aloft, even though <br>The weight within them strive to draw them down. <br>Hast thou not seen, sweeping so far and high, <br>The meteors, midnight flambeaus of the sky, <br>How after them they draw long trails of flame <br>Wherever Nature gives a thoroughfare? <br>How stars and constellations drop to earth, <br>Seest not? Nay, too, the sun from peak of heaven <br>Sheds round to every quarter its large heat, <br>And sows the new-ploughed intervales with light: <br>Thus also sun's heat downward tends to earth. <br>Athwart the rain thou seest the lightning fly; <br>Now here, now there, bursting from out the clouds, <br>The fires dash zig-zag- and that flaming power <br>Falls likewise down to earth. <br>In these affairs <br>We wish thee also well aware of this: <br>The atoms, as their own weight bears them down <br>Plumb through the void, at scarce determined times, <br>In scarce determined places, from their course <br>Decline a little- call it, so to speak, <br>Mere changed trend. For were it not their wont <br>Thuswise to swerve, down would they fall, each one, <br>Like drops of rain, through the unbottomed void; <br>And then collisions ne'er could be nor blows <br>Among the primal elements; and thus <br>Nature would never have created aught. </div><div style="margin:10px 0">But, if perchance be any that believe <br>The heavier bodies, as more swiftly borne <br>Plumb down the void, are able from above <br>To strike the lighter, thus engendering blows <br>Able to cause those procreant motions, far <br>From highways of true reason they retire. <br>For whatsoever through the waters fall, <br>Or through thin air, must their descent, <br>Each after its weight- on this account, because <br>Both bulk of water and the subtle air <br>By no means can retard each thing alike, <br>But give more quick before the heavier weight; <br>But contrariwise the empty void cannot, <br>On any side, at any time, to aught <br>Oppose resistance, but will ever yield, <br>True to its bent of nature. Wherefore all, <br>With equal speed, though equal not in weight, <br>Must rush, borne downward through the still inane. <br>Thus ne'er at all have heavier from above <br>Been swift to strike the lighter, gendering strokes <br>Which cause those divers motions, by whose means <br>Nature transacts her work. And so I say, <br>The atoms must a little swerve at times- <br>But only the least, lest we should seem to feign <br>Motions oblique, and fact refute us there. <br>For this we see forthwith is manifest: <br>Whatever the weight, it can't obliquely go, <br>Down on its headlong journey from above, <br>At least so far as thou canst mark; but who <br>Is there can mark by sense that naught can swerve <br>At all aside from off its road's straight line? </div><div style="margin:10px 0">Again, if ev'r all motions are co-linked, <br>And from the old ever arise the new <br>In fixed order, and primordial seeds <br>Produce not by their swerving some new start <br>Of motion to sunder the covenants of fate, <br>That cause succeed not cause from everlasting, <br>Whence this free will for creatures o'er the lands, <br>Whence is it wrested from the fates,- this will <br>Whereby we step right forward where desire <br>Leads each man on, whereby the same we swerve <br>In motions, not as at some fixed time, <br>Nor at some fixed line of space, but where <br>The mind itself has urged? For out of doubt <br>In these affairs 'tis each man's will itself <br>That gives the start, and hence throughout our limbs <br>Incipient motions are diffused. Again, <br>Dost thou not see, when, at a point of time, <br>The bars are opened, how the eager strength <br>Of horses cannot forward break as soon <br>As pants their mind to do? For it behooves <br>That all the stock of matter, through the frame, <br>Be roused, in order that, through every joint, <br>Aroused, it press and follow mind's desire; <br>So thus thou seest initial motion's gendered <br>From out the heart, aye, verily, proceeds <br>First from the spirit's will, whence at the last <br>'Tis given forth through joints and body entire. <br>Quite otherwise it is, when forth we move, <br>Impelled by a blow of another's mighty powers <br>And mighty urge; for then 'tis clear enough <br>All matter of our total body goes, <br>Hurried along, against our own desire- <br>Until the will has pulled upon the reins <br>And checked it back, throughout our members all; <br>At whose arbitrament indeed sometimes <br>The stock of matter's forced to change its path, <br>Throughout our members and throughout our joints, <br>And, after being forward cast, to be <br>Reined up, whereat it settles back again. <br>So seest thou not, how, though external force <br>Drive men before, and often make them move, <br>Onward against desire, and headlong snatched, <br>Yet is there something in these breasts of ours <br>Strong to combat, strong to withstand the same?- <br>Wherefore no less within the primal seeds <br>Thou must admit, besides all blows and weight, <br>Some other cause of motion, whence derives <br>This power in us inborn, of some free act.- <br>Since naught from nothing can become, we see. <br>For weight prevents all things should come to pass <br>Through blows, as 'twere, by some external force; <br>But that man's mind itself in all it does <br>Hath not a fixed necessity within, <br>Nor is not, like a conquered thing, compelled <br>To bear and suffer,- this state comes to man <br>From that slight swervement of the elements <br>In no fixed line of space, in no fixed time. <br>Nor ever was the stock of stuff more crammed, <br>Nor ever, again, sundered by bigger gaps: <br>For naught gives increase and naught takes away; <br>On which account, just as they move to-day, <br>The elemental bodies moved of old <br>And shall the same hereafter evermore. <br>And what was wont to be begot of old <br>Shall be begotten under selfsame terms <br>And grow and thrive in power, so far as given <br>To each by Nature's changeless, old decrees. <br>The sum of things there is no power can change, <br>For naught exists outside, to which can flee <br>Out of the world matter of any kind, <br>Nor forth from which a fresh supply can spring, <br>Break in upon the founded world, and change <br>Whole nature of things, and turn their motions about.</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=450286" data-title="Book II - Part 02 - Atomic Motions de Lucretius" data-description="Now come: I will untangle for thy steps 
Now by what motions the begetting bodies 
Of the world-stuff beget the varied world, 
And then forever resolve it when begot, 
And by what force they are constrained to this, 
And what the speed appointed u..."></div>
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