Read Online On the Nature of the Universe (Oxford World’s Classics) by Ronald Melville, Don, Peta Fowler - Free Book Online Page B

of infinite parts,
 
Since these can be halved, and their halves halved again,
 
Forever, with no end to the division.
 
So then what difference will there be between
 
The sum of all things and the least of things?
 
There will be none at all. For though the sum of things
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Will be completely infinite, the smallest bodies
 
Will equally consist of infinite parts.
 
But since true reasoning protests against this,
 
And tells us that the mind cannot believe it,
 
You must admit defeat, and recognize
 
That things exist which have no parts at all,
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Themselves being smallest. And since these exist
 
You must admit that the atoms they compose
 
Themselves are also solid and everlasting.
 
Lastly, if nature, great creatress, forced
 
All things to resolve into their smallest parts,
 
She would have no power to rebuild anything from them.
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For partless objects must lack the properties
 
That generative matter needs—the various
 
Connections, weights, blows, concourses, and movements
 
By which all things are made and operate.
 
Therefore those that have thought that the substance of things
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Is fire, and the universe consists of fire alone,
 
Have fallen far from valid reasoning.
 
Of these the champion, first to open the fray,
 
Is Heraclitus, famed for his dark sayings
 
Among the more empty-headed of the Greeks
 
Rather than those grave minds that seek the truth.
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For fools admire and love those things they see
 
Hidden in verses turned all upside down,
 
And take for truth what sweetly strokes the ears
 
And comes with sound of phrases fine imbued.
 
For why, I ask, are things so various
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If they are made of nothing but pure fire?
 
Let fire be denser or more rarefied,
 
So long as the parts do not differ from the whole
 
Nothing would be achieved.
 
The heat would be fiercer with the parts compressed
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And fainter with them spread out and dispersed.
 
That is all. In such conditions nothing more
 
Could we expect, much less this world of ours,
 
So various, be made from fire more dense or less.
 
There is this also: if they admit that void
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Is mixed with things, then it is possible
 
For fire to be condensed and rarefied;
 
But since they see so many obstacles,
 
They shrink from leaving pure void in things.
 
Fearing the heights, they lose the path of truth.
 
Nor do they see that, once void is removed,
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All things must be condensed and everything
 
Become one single body, that cannot throw off
 
Anything from itself in rapid movement,
 
As blazing fire throws off both light and heat.
 
So you may see that fire does not consist
 
Of parts close-packed and all compressed together.
 
But if they think that in some other way
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Fires can be quenched and have their substance changed,
 
If they insist on this, then all heat totally
 
Will manifestly perish into nothing,
 
And what is then created will come from nothing.
 
For things have limits fixed; if they by change
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Transgress them, then death follows instantly.
 
Therefore within them something must remain
 
Safe and secure, or you will find all things
 
Return quite into nothing, and from nothing
 
The stock of things reborn and growing strong.
 
So therefore there are certain definite bodies
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Which keep their nature unchanged, everlasting;
 
These by their comings and goings and changing order
 
Can change their nature and transform themselves.
 
And these atoms are, for sure, not made of fire.
 
For it would make no difference if some
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Should split off and depart and others be added
 
Or change positions, if nevertheless
 
They all possessed and kept the nature of fire.
 
For everything they made would still be fire.
 
The truth I think is this: there are certain bodies
 
Which by their impacts, movements, order, position, and shapes
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Produce fire, and which when their order is changed
 
Are changed themselves, and are not like fire,
 
Nor anything else that can send