saevitque minaci murmure pontus
4 while the sea rages with a threatening roar.' The deep roar of the sea
and the shrill howling of the wind are the two contrasting notes of
the storm.
2 i. 271-95. It is worth while to compare the powerful description of
a storm from the hand of an English writer whose method of painting
SCIENCE AND POETRY. 161
example of a force at work according to natural law ; but it
contains also something more, something which we may find in
Wordsworth, but for which we might for ever search the pages
of the science-primers in vain. There is in it a touch of all
that stirs the imagination in the grandeur of the flooded
river. This wild torrent might pour down the hills of any
region in Fairy-land, which the poets, who alone are the
guides for that country, have explored for us. How few
men have ever combined the scientific eye of the naturalist
with a genuine sense of the surpassing beauty of the world's
pictorial side ! No gift is rarer. Many, indeed, presume to
it, and many have attempted to unite both faculties ; but in
almost every case do we not feel this to be a mere presump-
tion something really ungenuine, howeyer little meant to be so ?
If we put aside Goethe, possibly the only writer who has
united a scientific instinct for the study of nature with a real
sense of the beauty of the world in colour and form, is one
recently gone from us, by no means gifted with Lucretius's
intensity of poetic expression, but holding, in gift of qualities of
nature has, we think, much akin to that of Lucretius. It is from Charlotte
Bronte.
'The wind ... all day had blown strong and full from the south,
without, however, bringing a speck of rain. Instead of subsiding as
night drew on, it seemed to augment its rush and deepen its roar ; the
trees blew steadfastly one way, never writhing round and scarcely tossing
back their boughs once in an hour ; so continuous was the strain bending
their branchy heads northwards the clouds drifted from pole to pole,
fast following, mass on mass ; no glimpse of blue sky had been visible
that July day. It was not without a certain wild pleasure I ran before
the wind delivering my trouble of mind to the measureless air-torrent
thundering through space ' ('Jane Eyre,' chap. xxv.).
This picture is not altogether unworthy of Lucretius himself. Lucre-
tius, too, would have delighted in just such a night of storm as Charlotte
Bronte here describes. Both feel the same kind of joy like children
watching round the hearth in observing Nature, the great Housekeeper,
at her work, whether clearing up in storm or at her everyday duties.
Both of them are, in the same fashion, at home with Nature.
M
162 THE ATOMIC THEORY OF LUCRETIUS.
mind and character rarely united in the same man, a place in
its way unique in literature our own much-honoured Charles
Kingsley. Almost any one of his books, from ( Yeast ' to his
' Christmas in the West Indies,' will show what we mean*. In
neither Kingsley nor in Lucretius has the scientific standpoint
driven out the sense of nature's beauty as something beyond
all analysis. Thus in Lucretius's pictures of nature, however
introduced, there is a touch which raises them beyond mere
illustrations of scientific doctrine. Indeed, it is wonderful how
easily, by a mere word or two, like some great actor who can
suddenly stir us to the heart by a simple change of tone,
Lucretius can at -any time rouse our feeling of awe in the very
midst of a scientific discussion. Thus, in the middle of a
laborious explanation of tlie cause of thunder, the line
Dant etiam sonitum patuli super aequora mundi,
at once brings before us the clouds moving slowly with solemn
thunder high above the earth.
Lucretius's mode of painting nature is in some ways unique.
He possesses the keenest eye for the pictorial, or rather the
picturesque aspect of the world that intense perception of the
contrasts of light and shadow which is given only to the Latin
race. We see it most notably in French literature, from the
mighty hand which paints great and passionate pictures of
tempest by sea and land in ' Les Travailleurs de la Mer ' down
to the simplest tale of story-tellers like Erckmann-Chatrian.
The latter, if they describe but the interior of the meanest
peasant's cottage, the coming-on of morning or of dark in a
plain, unromantic village, or the early setting-in of winter
among the Vosges, can make the scene stand before us vividly
as if we saw the very spot, looked through the cottage window
in the dark, or even felt the warmth of the logs crackling amid
the deep silence of the frost. Lucretius, too, has this power,
which makes us see the same landscape which he sees, and
SCIENCE AND POETRY. 163
almost hear its sounds, and breathe its air with a vividness of
picturing and lifelike projection which no other poet of the
ancient world possesses.
Take again his picture of the gathering tempest, when the
darkness vast as of hell fills the great caverns of the sky,
while phantom figures hover overhead amid the gloom before
the breaking of the storm
quod turn per totum concrescunt aera nubes,
undique uti tenebras oinnis Acherunta reamur
liquisse et maghas coeli complesse cavernas :
usque adeo taetra nimborum nocte coorta
impendent atrae formidinis ora superne :
cum commoliri tempestas fulmina coeptat. 1 vi. 250-5.
( For then the clouds, close in a mass over the whole sky on
every side, so that we might fancy that all its darkness had left
Acheron, 2 and had filled up the great caverns of heaven : in
such crowds do faces of black horror gather together amid the
frightful night of storm-clouds, and hang over us from on
high, at the time when the tempest is beginning to forge its
thunderbolts.'
There is a touch here which no other poet can give us,
unless perhaps it be Victor Hugo. Both he and Lucretius
have at command words of the same strange and almost magic
potency. Moreover, each of them constantly realizes the utter
weakness of man amid the dread powers of Nature. And do
not both poets convey to us the same sense of a background
of tempest and terror which surrounds our human life ?
We have spoken of the beauty of Lucretius's illustrations.
It is necessary to note that every such apologue which de-
1 The solemn motion of these lines shows consummate mastery of
verse. The unusual succession of spondees recurring at 11. 250, 252, and
255 is certainly intentional. In particular, the concluding line at once
calls up to the ear the long slow rolling of thunder just before a severe
storm.
2 i.e. the place of eternal darkness where the dead are. Acheron was
a word of terror, like Cocytus and Styx, the very sound of which, says
Plato (* Kepublic,' p. 387), ' makes all that hear them to shudder with fear.'
164 THE ATOMIC THEORY OF LUCRETIUS.
lights us by its beauty and freshness, is also a demonstration
of some doctrine. ( There is properly speaking no episode in
the poem,' says Martha. Lucretius's purpose is too keen and
fixed ta allow him ever to wander in any by-path, however
tempting. Gladly would the reader follow him at times off
his iron-bound pathway of Epicurean teaching to some detail
of personal history, or of individual preference, or of the part
played by himself in the busy world of Rome. But this he
never does. Though a man of his keen and passionate nature
must have had an eventful life, though the peculiar tone of his
preaching against ambition and the mad Roman lust for power
and pleasure might tell us that he too had played high for the
prizes of the world in his day, 1 still he never allows himself
to dwell on any details of his own past history. He is too
absorbed in his mission of preaching salvation and peace, after
the manner of Epicurus, to a suffering world. Not improbably,
indeed, his conversion to Epicureanism did not occur till the
later years of his life, and not long before he commenced his
poem.
The English reader who has heard much of Lucretius's
imagination and poetic charm is somewhat astonished when he
finds the earlier part of the poem composed in great part of
passages containing scientific argument and proposition of the
most close and exact kind. When he comes to a passage like
that beginning,
1 May we infer from iii. 170-4 that Lucretius had at some time been
wounded in battle ? At all events he analyzes the sensations following
after a severe wound as if from personal experience.
si minus offendit vitam vis horrida teli
ossibus ac nervis disclusis intus adacta,
at tamen insequitur languor terraeque petitus
segnis, et in terra mentis qui gignitur aestus,
interdumque quasi exurgendi incerta voluntas.
Again, in Book iv., he certainly speaks as one who had experience of
passionate love, seemingly for one who was no very worthy object.
SCIENCE AND POETRY. 165
quod si forte aliquis credit graviora potesse,
corpora, quo citius rectum per inane feruntur,
incidere ex supero levioribus, atque ita plagas
gignere, &c.
and so on for many verses, in which Lucretius tries to prove
that heavy bodies do not fall more quickly than lighter in
the void, he naturally asks, f Is this long scientific discourse
poetry ? ' To this we would answer that the poem is pene-
trated through and through in its most severe and protracted
reasonings, its plainest and most matter-of-fact statements, by
the earnest purpose of the poet. It is this that turns the prose
of it to poetry, and informs the plainest line with feeling. He
frequently reminds us that the aim of his inquiry is not scientific,
but to overthrow superstition. The atomic philosophy which he
las stated with such care, and defined in its every doctrine
with utmost exactness, is the foundation on which he hopes
to build a system that shall deliver man from care and fear,
and make it possible for him to live his life aright. This
burning earnestness of purpose extends from the passionate
poetry of the prologues even into the most arid discussions, so
that even here Lucretius still holds the reader, and s he cannot
hoose but hear.' But it is not merely earnestness there is
also a strong personal attraction in Lucretius. His chivalrous
Doldness draws us to him. The reader who studies him
leartily follows by a kind of charm his figure in the front
seeping his daring road, and does not desert the poet even
when he leads through waste and stony places.
It is remarkable how completely Intellect and Imagination
work in harness in the ' De Rerun! Natura.' Nothing but the
very strongest fire of feeling could have enabled him so to
master such weighty subject-matter. No other poet has ever
soared upward carrying with him so heavy a load, yet Lucretius
loes lift the burden which would chain other men to earth,
and even make his relation of Epicurean doctrines in great
166 THE ATOMIC THEORY OF LUCRETIUS.
part lucid and beautiful. Doubtless this strong white heat
of his soul which alone could fuse such materials, made the
writing of his poem in the last years of his life a most ex-
hausting labour. He speaks of spending the quiet nights in
composing it. 1 Even in sleep, he tells us, his mind still labours
at the same task of investigating the nature of things, and
striving to commit it to verse. 2 All through the poem he
speaks like a man ever driven on by some consuming passion
until the labour he has set himself is finished, and who
is unable to take rest in any halting-place by the way. So
strong and impetuous is the tide which rushes on from the first
verse of the ' De Rerum Natura ' to the last, that the energies
of the poet may well have been wasted in its mighty and
unfailing flow.
quemvis sufferre laborem
suadet et inducit noctes vigilare serenas,
quaerentem dictis quibus et quo carmine demum
clara tuae possim praepandere lumina menti,
res quibus occultas penitus convisere possis. i. 142.
in somnis ....
nos agere hoc autem et naturam quaerere rerum
semper et inventam patriis exponere chartis. iv. 965-70.
Compare ii. 729
dicta meo dulci quaesita labore.
and iv. 419
conquisita diu dulcique r-eperta labore
carmina.
CHAPTER X.
WHAT THE WORLD OWES TO LUCRETIUS. HIS TEACHING
AND PERSONALITY.
r I ^HERE is much apparent reason to justify the belief that
Lucretius's system was in reality atheistic. According
to his master Epicurus the Gods exist, but in nature and func-
tion they are utterly unlike the Gods hitherto adored by man-
kind. They are to be worshipped because of their excellence,
not because they have power to help or to hurt human beings.
They have nothing to do in the world or for it, but live
supremely happy arid supremely idle in a stormless, cloudless
Epicurean heaven which is situated .in the intermundia,
The lucid interspace of world and world,
Where never creeps a cloud or moves a wind,
Nor ever falls the least white star of snow,
Nor ever lowest roll of thunder moans,
Nor sound of human sorrow mounts to mar
Their sacred everlasting calm. 1
For Epicurus's atomic explanation of the world they are
entirely superfluous. Why then, it is often asked, did not
Epicurus, instead of thus pensioning off the Gods in the inter-
mundia so as to be well out of the way, entirely give up
these meaningless but pernicious shadow-deities ? Is it not
most probable that Epicurus really had no faith in any Divine
existence whatever ? The open profession of atheism would
have rendered his system too unpopular (would have been
' dangerous,' as Lange says), and therefore is it not most likely
1 From Tennyson's poem, * Lucretius.'
168 THE ATOMIC THEORY OF LUCRETIUS.
that his profession of belief in the Gods was simply nominal
and for appearance' sake, merely, as Lange calls it, 1 ' a con-
cession to the existing order of things' ? At present we can only
reply that Lange's opinion is entirely without foundation. It
is in opposition to that of scholars who, like Zeller, Munro, and
Martha, have studied Epicureanism most thoroughly. There
is unquestionable evidence that both Epicurus and Lucretius
did believe, and believe firmly, in the existence of these Deities,
strange as they are. What the relation was between the Epi-
curean and his new Pantheon is a subject which we cannot
here enter upon. M. Martha 2 calls the religion of Epicurus
( a kind of obscure mysticism.' 3
It is undeniable, however, that Epicurus left the Gods no part
1 * Geschichte des Materialismus.' Erster Abschnitt. Cap. iv. 1873.
2 ' Une sorte de mysticisme epais ' (' Le Poeme de Lucrece,' p. 106).
3 We cannot help thinking that Lucretius, had he lived, would have con-
cluded his poem with a description of the Epicurean Gods and their heaven.
The poem, as it stands, stops abruptly in the course of a description of the
plague. Lange says (p. 120) that Lucretius * perhaps intentionally' con-
cludes his work with a description of the power of death, as he begins with
an invocation of the Goddess of Life. But we have absolutely no reason to
suppose that Lucretius intended this for the conclusion. It seems plain
(from vi. 92 ff.) that he intended the Sixth Book for the last. He has also
expressly promised to describe the Gods and their seats 'at length ' (largo
sermone. See v. 146-55). As this promise is nowhere fulfilled, he must
apparently have reserved this subject for the conclusion of the Sixth Book
and of the poem. How then could Lucretius introduce such a subject after
his description of the plague ? Probably as follows : The plague was sup-
posed to come from the Gods and to be a Divine visitation but it has
been shown to come from natural causes. How should the Gods trouble
themselves to produce such a thing, they who live in perfect calm and
bliss ? Such a connection of ideas is in accordance with Lucretius's way
"of introducing a fresh subject, and would harmonize well with the intro-
duction of the book (11. 50-79),' proving that such interference is incom-
patible with the perfect bliss of the Gods. The picture of the Gods and
their abode might possibly have occupied two or three hundred lines.
Doubtless a wonderful piece of painting that would have been (for Lucretius
has gorgeous colours at command), and not entirely uninfluenced by the
old mythology.
WHAT THE WORLD OWES TO LUCRETIUS. 169
whatever to play. And, when Lucretius says that
of the Gods would be dissolved if the supply of matter, were not
infinite, is it not plain that their existence is less real tojiim
than that of Matter ? It is far more God to him than were
his absurd, idle Epicurean Deities, who we need hardly say
(though some living writers 1 approve and admire Epicurus's
relation to the Gods) could not be Gods to him or to any man
except in name. In reality, where Matter is conceived eternal,
where it is able to evolve Life, where there is no Divine
Being (or only a nominal one), Matter isjjiere the supreme
and ultimaterejajity. The mighty torrent of atoms f streaming
for^ ever through space and capable of striking out worlds fu 1 1
o beauty and life by their combinations this ? in truth, is
Lucretius's God.
It is thought by many that Lucretius's whole conception of
the world is essentially irreconcilable with that of Divine
action in any form. This is not difficult to understand when
we think of such passages as the following
quas ob res ubi viderimus nil posse creari
de nihilo, turn quod sequimur iam rectius inde
perspiciemus, et unde queat res quaeque creari, ,
et quo quaeque modo fiant opera sine divom. 2
( Wherefore, when we have seen that nought can be created out
of nothing, hence we shall now know more thoroughly that which
we are seeking, namely, both the elements out of which every-
thing can be produced and in what manner all things are done
without the hand of the Gods.'
Or again :
1 * On one great point the mind of Epicurus was at peace. He neither
sought nor expected, here or hereafter, any personal profit from his rela-
tion to the gods. And it is assuredly a fact that loftiness and serenity of
thought may be promoted by conceptions which involve no idea of profit
of this kind ' (Address delivered before the British Association, by John
Tyndall, 1874, p. 10).
2 i. 156-9.
170 THE ATOMIC THEORY OF LUCRETIUS.
Quae bene cognita si teneas, natura videtur,
libera continue, dorninis privata superbis,
ipsa sua per se sponte omnia dis agere expers. 1
' If you well understand these things and keep them in mind,
nature, free at once and rid of her haughty lords, is seen to
do all things of herself and entirely of her own accord,
without the aid of the Gods.'
Is not teaching like this distinctly anti-Theistic ? it may be
asked. Before this question can be answered, it is necessary to
consider what notion of a Divine government of the world as
well as of human affairs prevailed in Lucretius's day. Was
it a noble or an ignoble one ? Or does he write out of
mere antipathy to any belief in Divine Providence, when he
boasts that Nature works of herself ' without the hand of the
Gods ' ?
If religion, in any genuine form, hardly existed in Lucre-
tius's time, at all events the agency of the Gods in the world
was most distinctly and constantly acknowledged. The whole
fabric of Roman society and of the state was penetrated by a
belief in what is called Divination, that is to say, that the
result of every undertaking could be forecast, ere it was entered
on, by inspecting the entrails of a victim, or by other kinds of
augury, moreover, that every event of importance, either to
the individual or to the nation, was announced by prodigies of
various kinds, and that to a certain extent the performance of
proper sacrifices could avert any calamity thus foretold. It
was not merely by the ignorant that such a belief was held,
not by fishermen or shepherds only, but by the wisest and
greatest in the land, by the general as well as by the soldier
in the ranks. The practice was officially recognized by the
state. Any prodigy, as soon as it was announced, was
examined into by the Senate, and officially reported on. More-
over, a college of augurs existed, whose business it was, on
1 ii. 1090-92.
WHAT THE WORLD OWES TO LUCRETIUS. 171
every important occasion, to ascertain the will of the Gods
from various signs. ' Who does not know that this city was
founded by auspices ? that by auspices all things are con-
ducted, during war and peace, at home and abroad ? ' J
Auspices were taken at the election of a king, consul, or
praetor, as well as of some other magistrates, and unless these
could be reported favourable, the election was void. Without
auspices no public assembly could be held. A general could
not cross the frontier, or engage an enemy, unless the birds
sanctioned. Crassus's defeat by the Parthians was explained
by his having fought against the auspices. Pompey was com-
pelled to fight at Philippi because the auspices were favour-
able. 2 Frequently too, private affairs, marriage for instance,
were not entered into without thus trying to elicit some
sign of Divine approval. Besides the flight of birds and
the examination of victims, there were, as Pliny tells us, eleven
different kinds of lightning, each with a different signification.
Such notions regarding natural phenomena, we need hardly
say, rendered any scientific view of nature utterly impossible.
If the harvest failed, it was not from improper farming so much
as because some one of the divinities concerned had not been
properly propitiated. When hail destroyed the olive-orchards
of the Athenians, it was because some god wished to gratify
their enemies, the Spartans. f According to ancient religion,'
says Martha, ' there is no law, everything in nature is arbitrary
and disconnected, phenomena depend on Divine caprice, the
thunderbolt, eclipses, movements of the heavenly bodies, the
simplest things, the flight of a bird, the running stream, adeo
minimis etiam rebus prava religio inserit deos. There is no
physical science, there is only one art of value, that of augurs
1 ' Auspiciis hanc urbem conditam esse, auspiciis bello ac pace, domi
militiaeque omnia geri, quis est qui ignoret ? ' From the speech of Appius
Claudius, Livy, vi. 41. Compare Cicero in Vat. 6, 'auspicia, quibus haec
urbs condita est, quibus omnis respublica atque imperium continetur.'
2 Both instances are cited by M. Martha, ' Le Poeme de Lucrece,'p. 362.
172 THE ATOMIC THEORY OF LUCRETIUS.
and diviners, since at any instant all may be confused by the
bad-humour, the benevolence, or even the forgetfulness of the
divinity concerned. . . . One may say that in the eyes of
Pagan credulity, not only do no physical laws exist, but there
are no political and moral laws. When Rome and Carthage
are at war, and their fleets are going to encounter, the people
in suspense ask not on what side is right and justice, on what
side the generals are the best and the soldiers the most valiant,
in a word, on what side -virtue is ? but whether the sacred
chickens will consent to eat.' l We can easily imagine what the
moral consequences of such a system must have been, on one
side, the lying in the name of God and premeditated trickery
practised by a priestly class, living by the basest fraud, and,
on the other side, the childish fears and the utter undermining of
Conscience caused by a system according to which the Divine
approval was secured, not by the sole qualification of righteous-
ness, but by minute attendance to forms of propitiation.
And what was the character of these deities so busy in the
world ? Probably the divine Beings pictured in Virgil's
Aeneid are not unlike the Gods of the popular belief. How
then does Virgil represent them ? False, treacherous, re-
vengeful ; they never forget or forgive, but watch with feline
vigilance for an opportunity to punish those who have all
innocently offended them. To the average Roman, not
learned or speculative, the world was full of invisible powers,
multiplex, jealous, ever-watching. The more zealously that a
man paid attention to one God, the more might he offend
another, since each different circumstance of life had its own
guarding Deity. It was difficult to ascertain the will of each ;
it was easy to offend without knowing it. Thus Lucretius
paints the anxiety of the devotee to leave no altar unhonoured
omnis accedere ad aras.
Again, if anyone were careless and paid no heed to the Divine
1 M. Martha,' * Le Poeme de Lucrece,' pp. 73-4.
WHAT THE WORLD OWES TO LUCRETIUS. 173
intimation, however trifling, what terrible unknown conse-
quences might follow. Even a dream, however ludicrous, may
possibly be a warning of some coming evil. The springs of reli-