omnis cum in tenebris praesertim vita laboret. ii. 54.
hinc nova proles
artubus infirmis teneras lasciva per herbas
ludit, lacte mero rnentes perculsa novellas. i. 259-61.
3 See ii. 333-80.
WHAT THE WORLD OWES TO LUCRETIUS. 185
manifold animal gladness there lies, like some boundless sea, a
deeper life, vast and happy. It is thus that passages of his
poem speak to us, telling of moods in which his Epicurean
creed could barely, as if for duty's sake, throw a veil over the
throbbing life of the world which bursts through the covering
and will not be hid. Over and over again he has told us that
the world is chance-born, but at the same time he says to us
through grand and lovely pictures of nature, ' See ! is not
the world more mysterious, and does not its beauty compel our
awe more than anything of mere atomic parentage could do ? '
Most true and apt, therefore, are the words of Mrs. Browning ;
Lucretius
Denied
Divinely the divine and died,
Chief poet on the Tiber-side.
Even while he most stoutly denies that there is any Divine
element in the world, this poet of Materialism rouses us to feel
that there is something in and behind its grandeur and its
ever-changing beauty which rebukes our sensual impulses and
compels our worship. In short, Lucretius, like the writers of
the Psalms, makes us feel that there is a spiritual element in
Nature. To attribute such thoughts to Lucretius may be
termed mere fancy, simply without foundation, if not con-
trary to fact, as those who know the poet merely as an
ardent Epicurean may tell us. But Lucretius was not merely
an Epicurean, he was also most genuinely a poet, with a poet's
heart, that is to say, with a heart more human than that of
other men, and therefore one which craved more deeply to
assert its relation to God as well as to man, and specially one
to which the beauty of the world, of necessity, carried even
stronger and more certain inspirations than it does to other men.
Such a nature must have broken into rebellion now and then,
and listened to the voice of its deepest instincts, which at other
times were rigidly chained down.
186 THE ATOMIC THEORY OF LUCRETIUS.
Lucretius has indeed most minutely explained to us the
Birth of the World from chance atomic combination as a matter
with no mystery about it. He has shown how the wheels of
the machine were first set in motion, how it keeps going on,
and how steadily it works. So far he follows his master. Yet,
in spite of this, in his inmost thought and feeling it is clear
that the world is no dead mechanism to him. He does not
regard it, as the ordinary man of science would now have us
do, as a mere eight-day clock, a marvellous time-keeper.
Nor yet is the world to Lucretius, as the roue deems
it, a battered old machine, grim and grey, coming wearily
up to time for yet another spring. No I Lucretius cannot
help thinking of it in the way that all great poets have
done, as something divinely beautiful and grand, which, even
though his own life may be sad, still remains to him fresh and
bright as it is to the child.
It is remarkable that a system of atomic materialism should
allow the existence of Free-will at all. Epicurus and Lucre-
tius, however, most firmly believed that man has free choice
I and is responsible for his actions. It is this alone which dig-
nifies Lucretius's system, based as it is on Materialism, and
which enables us to respect him as a moral teacher. Jf fiprA
is no Free-will, there can be no such thing ji_filr>. Each
of us, sensual and cowardly, or pure and heroic, but plays
the part to which he was fated by his birth. ( It. cannot
be denied,' says Martineau, ' that the whole system of
moral conceptions, feelings, and language, rests upon the
belief in .Free-will, and deals with man as (within its par-
ticular range) the real cause of what he is and does. But
for this, who could suffer compunction any more for a lie
than for a squint, or shame for delirium tremens more than
for a typhoid fever, or feel more indignant disgust at the
crimes of a Caesar Borgia than at the rapacity of a wolf
Remorse for sin would be impossible but for the consciousne c
I
TEACHING OF LUCKETIUS. 187
that it lies at our door.' l Lucretius's firm belief in man's
freedom, in the fatis avolsa potestas, ' the ppwer wrested from
the fates/ gave him a strong conviction of human responsibility
for rectitude or guilt. Thus, he tells us, it is in our power to
eradicate our own evil temperaments, not indeed completely,
so that one man shall not still be more prone than another to
anger or fear, but training and reason will do almost every-
thing. 2 ( So very small,' he concludes, e are the traces left of
men's original natures, which reason is unable to expel from
us, that nothing hinders us from living a life worthy of the
gods.' Consistent with this belief is Lucretius's keen convic-
tion of the misery brought by guilt to the sinner. Repeatedly
he dwells on the power of conscience to torture the guilty soul,
as, in his picture of the youth captivated by a courtesan,
who feels that he is squandering his years and his wealth,
conscius ipse animus se forte remordet. 3
lie repeatedly points out that the criminal, even though his sin be
not found out, cannot live a happy life. ( Violence and wrong
catch all who commit them in a net, and for the most part recoil
1 ' Ethics and Eeligion,' by James Martineau. 1881, p. 12.
2 Lucretius attributes these differences of disposition to differences in
the atomic structure of the mind, yet even so, he deems man the master,
and not the slave, of his own inherited temperament.
quamvis doctrina politos
constituat pariter quosdam, tamen ilia relinquit
naturae cuiusque animi vestigia prima
inque aliis rebus miiltis differre necessest
naturas hominum varias moresque sequacis ;
quorum ego. mine nequeo caecas exponere causas
nee reperire figurarum tot nomina qiiot sunt
principiis, unde haec oritur variantia rerum.
illud in his rebus vide'or firmare potesse,
usque adeo naturarum vestigia linqui
parvola quae nequeat ratio depellere nobis,
ut nil impediat dignam dis degere vitam. iii. 307-22.
3 iv. 1121-40.
188 THE ATOMIC THEORY OF LUCRETIUS.
on him from whom they sprung.'. 1 We seldom find in Lucretius
any direct teaching which shows a consuming passion for
personal righteousness. On such points his expressed teaching
rather takes a negative form ; it aims, that is, at saving men
from the fear and the evil appetites which make their lives
misery. Yet there is a fervour of what is, in reality, genuine
religious feeling in Lucretius. Thus, in denying the common
notions of hell and its torments, he points out that in truth hell
is not outside a man, but within him. Truly it consists in
doing wrong and the consequent misery of mind. ' There is
in this life a dread of punishment for evil deeds, signal as the
deeds are signal, and as an atonement for guilt there is the
prison and the frightful hurling down from the rock, scourg-
ings, executioners, the condemned dungeon, the boiling pitch,
the red-hot plate, the torches. Yea, and though these be
wanting, still the conscience-stricken mind (mens sibi conscia
factis), fearing before the time, applies to itself goads, and
frightens itself with whips, and sees not meanwhile what end
there can be of ills, nor what limit at last there can be to punish-
ments and fears, lest the same evils be increased after death.
The life of the fool, in short, becomes a hell here upon earth." 1 *
Hie Acherusia fit stultorum denique vita.
circumretit enim vis atque iniuria quemque
atque, unde exortast, ad eum plerurnque revertit,
nee facilest placidam ac pacatam degere vitam
qui violat factis communia foedera pacis.
etsi fallit enim divom genus humanumque,
perpetuo tamen id fore clam diffidere debet ;
quippe ubi se multi per soinnia saepe loquentes
aut morbo delirantes protraxe ferantur
et celata mala in medium et peccata dedisse. v. 1152-60.
If we compare with these lines the passages quoted by Munro (on
1. 157). from Epicurus, we find that Lucretius adopts a different tone from
his master's in referring to the consciousness of guilt.
2 sed metus in vita poenarum pro male factis
est insignibus insignis scelerisque luella,
TEACHING OF LUCKETIUS. 189
There is far more that is spiritual in the denial of hell and its
terrors from such a standpoint than there was in the orthodoxy
of the poet's day. Lucretius has the utmost contempt for
merely formal religion. At thought of this, a sudden blaze
of anger, mixed with pity, flashes out of him. ' There is no
holiness in being often seen to turn oneself with veiled head
towards a stone, and to approach every altar and to fall ^ros-
trate on the ground, and to spread out one's palms before the
statues of the gods, and sprinkle the altars with much blood
of beasts, and link vow on to vow, rather is it to be able to
look on all things with a mind at peace.' l Lucretius sees most
clearly that religion consists not in making oneself safe, and in
anxiously striving to propitiate the Gods. He finds more of true
religion in an open-eyed soul which looks the facts of the world
full in the face, without any slavish dread of unseen powers
pacata posse omnia mente tueri.
The anxiety to appease the Gods by devout ceremonies, springs
career et horribilis de saxo iactu' deorsum,
verbera, carnifices, robur, pix, lainniina, taedae ;
quae tamen etsi absunt, at mens sibi conscia factis,
praemetuens adhibet stimulos terretque flagellis
nee videt interea qui terminus esse malorum
possit nee quae sit poenarum denique finis
atque eadem metuit magis haec ne in morte gravescant.
hie Acherusia fit stultorum denique vita. iii. 1014-23.
nee pietas ullast velatum saepe videri
vertier ad lapidem atque omnis accedere ad aras
nee procumbere humi prostratum et pandere palmas
ante deum delubra nee aras sanguine multo
spargere quadrupedum nee votis nectere vota,
sed mage pacata posse omnia mente tueri. v. 1198-1203.
Lucretius here refers to the most solemn forms of Koman worship;
* velatum refers to the Roman custom of praying velato or operto capite '
(with head covered), and vertier ad lapidem to another posture in worship,
* the suppliant approached in such a way as to have the statue of the God
on his right, and then, after praying, wheeled to the right so as to front
it, and then prostrated himself.' MUNEO.
190 THE ATOMIC THEORY OF LUCRETIUS.
from Fear, and Lucretius seems to have felt strongly that selfish
Fear has little in common with true worship. He does not
attempt to explain this conviction, but is it not, even from his
own standpoint, profoundly true ? Especially, however, we
cannot help seeing a religious tone in the intense earnestness
with which Lucretius often warns men against the slavery to
ambition. At such times he seems to single out his hearer, and
to speak with a voice not out of centuries past, but as it were
standing by our side. He laments that men f wear themselves
out to no end, and sweat with blood as they toil along the narrow
road of ambition.' ( Avarice and the blind lust of honours
compel hapless men to step across the bounds of right, and, some-
times as accomplices and agents in crimes, to strive night and day
with surpassing toil to struggle up to the heights of power.' l
From the safe and stable high places, ' well fortified by the
learning of the wise,' to which Epicurus has raised him, Lucre-
tius looks down with deepest pity ( to see other men wandering
all abroad and going astray in their search for the path of life,
to see the contest of intellect, the rivalry of birth, the striving
night and day with surpassing effort to struggle up to the
height of power and be masters of the world. jO miserable
minds of men ! O blinded hearts ! in what darkness of life and
amid how great dangers is passed this little term of our exis-
tence, all that there is of it.' 2 There are many such passages.
Why is it that such warnings affect us quite differently
from those of Horace to much the same effect ? Because it
is a different nature that speaks to us, because there is far
more of a spiritual tone, and not merely selfish prudence in
Lucretius: He does not say, ' See the foolish toiling of these
ambitious men, who might have done better, risked no battles
by land or sea, spent no nights in watching, lived many safe
1 v. 1131-2 ; iii. 59-63.
2 ii. 7-16. We quote almost literally from Mr. Munro's vigorous ren-
dering.
TEACHING OF LUCEETIUS. 191
and easy days.' No ! At thought of this, Lucretius feels a pity
touched with admiration. It is the earnest effort and dauntless
striving which he admires, but wasted which he pities, and
cannot pity too much, seeing that men spend their money for
that which is not bread. In Lucretius's preaching against
ambition we discern a passionate and daring soul which finds
it hard to curb itself ; in Horace we see a timid, and restricted
nature which has not courage to attempt the heights. In no
other utterances does Lucretius's personality become so distinct
as in these. It may well be that his frequent warnings against
ambition are the voice of one who has himself toiled ' along the
narrow road,'
angustum per iter . . . ambitionis,
and who has found that such a life can in no case satisfy the
hunger of the soul. Few have ever felt more deeply that
the cause of man's unhappiness is within himself, that even
with &11 earthly success, and with every luxury at command,
he is still disquieted. And for this, Lucretius tells us, the
heart of man is to blame. He needs some saviour from with-
out to cleanse it, and to point out to him the viam vitae, e the
way of life.' By a striking 'parable he shows that we need to
change ourselves, and not our circumstances. The heart of
man, he says, is like a vessel which is corrupt and befouls all
the precious things which are poured into it, or which is f leaky
and full of holes, so that it can never by any means be filled
full. . . . Therefore,' he says, Epicurus ( cleansed men's hearts
with his truth-speaking precepts and fixed a limit to lust and
fear, and showed what is that chief good which we all are
seeking, and pointed out the road along which, by a short cross-
track, straight and direct, we might struggle towards it.' l
The brilliant prologues to Lucretius's books are simply
throbbing with the most intense enthusiasm for humanity. In
atque viam monstravit, tramite pawo
qua possemus ad id recto contendere cursu. vi. 27-8.
192 THE ATOMIC THEORY OF LUCRETIUS.
each of them Lucretius warns his readers with pathetic earnest-
ness against ambition, 1 and points out the only way of salva-
tion, that brought by Epicurus. Thrice he concludes with the
same beautiful and tender words. It -is reason alone which can
deliver men from care and fear, ' since the whole of life is a
struggle in the dark. Just as children in the dark tremble and
dread every object, so we in broad daylight fear, sometimes,
things which are no more objects of terror than those which chil-
dren shudder at in the darkness and fancy they must certainly
exist. This terror, therefore, and darkness of the mind must be
dispersed, not by the rays of the sun and the bright shafts of
day, but by the aspect of Nature and her laws.' 2 A small and
selfish nature does not bear such pity for others of human kind.
Again, his admiration for the spiritual bravery of Epicurus, and
his supreme scorn for the cowardice of soul which, for fear of
evils in this world or in the next, dare not look facts in the face,
is this not the sign of a fearless spjrit and of loyalty to truth ?
Further, we have shown how keenly Lucretius makes us feel the
grandeur and beauty of the world. Beyond question, it is
never in the mirror of a selfish and sensual mind that the world
can reflect itself thus nobly. Lucretius vaunts himself so
boldly as the poet of Materialism that he has often been
1 Especially in the magnificent prooemium of Book ii., 11. 1-61. Pro-
bably in all literature there is no other so penetrating description of the
nature of ambition. Lucretius here sounds the deepest places of the
human heart.
omnis cum in tenebris praesertim vita laboret.
nam veluti pueri trepidant atque omnia caecis
in tenebris metuunt, sic nos in luce timemus
interdum, nilo quae sunt metuenda magis quam
quae pueri in tenebris pavitant finguntque futura.
hunc igitur t.errorem animi tenebrasque necessest
non radii solis neque lucida tela diei
discutiant, sed naturae species ratioque. ii. 54-61.
Repeated at iii. 87-93 and vi. 35-41.
TEACHING OF LUCRETIUS. 193
thought to be a man without any religious instincts. But do
we not find the certain signs of a spiritual nature in the
features here indicated, in his utter hatred of cowardice and
falsehood, in his deep pity for the suffering of mankind, and
in his passionate eagerness to give to other men the salvation
which he has found for himself?
We are now better able to estimate the position of Lucretius
and the aim of his poem. We see that he was a man of in-
tensely earnest temper. The vision of Nature had filled his
soul with the majesty of natural law. To him Nature seemed
far grander than the old gods of the Pantheon at their
mightiest. Moreover, he could not but feel that the con-
science-nature of man with its abhorrence of wrong and cruelty
represented something infinitely higher than the old impure,
selfish, jealous Gods. Conscience, too (though he misunder-
stood its origin and the source of its authority), told him that
they were false. It is difficult to decide whether Lucretius is
to be viewed primarily as the opponent of Paganism or as a
physical inquirer, whether his strongest craving was to pursue
science or to cast out the superstitious terrors of a false and in-
sufficient creed. It is indeed probable that, had he not been
so deeply impressed with the evils of the national religion, and
had he not seen in the atomic theory a philosophical weapon
against them, he would never have drawn the subject of his
poem from such a source. In his age there were many who
found little difficulty in accepting this theory as a proof that
the Gods have not created man, and, so far as he is concerned,
are powerless for good or for evil. Lucretius, too, accepted
the scientific system of Epicurus, and followed it up with all
the strength of his intellect, the more so as he had a* natural
faculty and decided fondness for such pursuits. It was a
dogma of Epicurus that physics has a right to exist only for the
sake of ethics, in order to show the falsehood of superstition,
and that for any other end such inquiries are useless. If Lu-
o
194 THE ATOMIC THEORY OF LUCRETIUS.
cretius, a man of far more eager and earnest temper, held this
opinion at all, it was in a far less absolute form. In the study
of nature .for its own sake he found the keenest pleasure. Still
it is true that even the strong intellectual passion which he
shows for scientific research pales before the intense white heat
of his human sympathies. Perhaps these are nowhere more
strongly shown than in the wonderful description of the sacri-
fice of Iphigeiiia. Of all the Greek legends dealing with
human sacrifice, this was by far the most painful and repulsive.
No self-offered victim she, according to the legend, but one
dragged to the altar, weeping and all unwilling. She is im-
pelled by no high resolve to drive the knife into her own breast,
to give her life of her own will for the sake of her country-
men. She simply feels that she is young and that -life is sweet.
There is no bright calm halo of self-sacrifice here that might
move us to forget the horrible superstition that made cowards
of the standers-by, warriors though they were, but fearing, far
worse than death, some awful judgment from offended Gods,
should they dare to snatch the knife from the hand of the priest
and bid the victim go. Who that has once read can ever for-
get Lucretius's description of the weeping human victim the
young girl decked with the fillet on her soft hair, 1 like a beast
for sacrifice, dropping on the ground in terror when she sees
the approving priests, who stand by and conceal the knife,
appealing in vain to her father, and at last carried by force to
the altar ? The scene is painfully vivid. Probably Lucretius
may have seen horrible punishments inflicted at Rome for
1 . cui simul infula virgineos circumdata comptus
ex utraque pari malarum parte profusast. i. 87-8.
For us these lines have no force, but to a Roman reader they must have
been most impressive. The victim made ready for the sacrifice, with
woollen fillets hanging down at equal length on either side of its head,
was a common sight in Lucretius's day. Iphigenia is the human victim,
decked beast-wise. How would our own Shelley have done justice to a
subject like this !
TEACHING OF LUCRETIUS. 195
offences against religion. 1 At any rate, he uses this story of the
past because he believes that the religion of his own day is fit
to produce evil deeds and crimes like this, and does produce
them. 2 If he had drawn but this one picture, its every detail
1 If Lucretius had not himself seen the punishment by burial alive of a
Vestal virgin, at all events he had heard it described by eye-witnesses.
About the year 114 B.C., Aemilia, Licinia, and Marcia suffered thus (Dio
Cassius, fragm. of Book 34). The offence so punished was unchastity,
which might be real, or was presumed of the priestess under whose charge
the holy fire had gone out. In such cases, the chief priest, the Pontifex
Maximus, after praying silently with outstretched hands, led the victim
to the entrance of the cell (cubiculum subterraneum. Pliny, *Ep.,' iv.
11). She then descended by a ladder, the cell was shut by the executioner,
and earth piled closely over it a horrible death ! The execution was
carried out in public, and, as Plutarch tells us, the populace watched it in
awe-stricken silence. The place was ' near the Colline Gate, on the right
hand of the road ' (Livy, viii. 15). Lucretius must often have passed
this hideous spot, justly called ' The Accursed Field,' Campus Scele-
ratus.
quod contra saepius ilia
religio peperit scelerosa atque impia facta. i. 82-3.
Lucretius is not thinking of distant times only, nor yet of far-off barbarous
lands like Gaul and Carthage in his own day, where such rites were fre-
quent and often many victims slain at once. Human sacrifices were not
unknown even at Borne, and in Lucretius's own time. After the terrible
disaster at Cannae, four victims (two Greeks and two Gauls, of either sex)
were buried alive in the Forum Boarium, at a spot where such sacrifices
were repeatedly performed ; * a most un-Roman rite,' as Livy calls it
[minime Romano sacro, Livy, xxii. 57). Again, two years after the birth of
Lucretius, with reference to some human sacrifice which had been carried
out publicly, the Roman Senate passed a decree forbidding such rites (ne
homo immolaretur, Pliny, 'Hist. Nat.,' xxx. 3). They still subsisted
however. Etiam nostra aetas vidit, remarks Pliny, who died in A.D. 79
(' Hist. Nat.,' xxviii. 3). Plutarch (A.D. 46-120) refers to them in a tone
of horror as still performed during the month of November (ot m Kai vvv
iv T<$ Noeju/3(0/y [ni]vi dputaiv "EXXrjai mi TaXaraic; aTroppfjrov^ Kai aQfaTovs
wpyiae. Marcellus, iii.). A little later the Emperor Hadrian had to
issue an edict against them. Even in mild and civilized Greece human
sacrifices were offered, as, for instance, to Zeus, on the summit of Mount
Lycaeos in Arcadia (referred to in the Platonic Minos, p. 315). Accord-
ing to Porphyries ('De Abstin.,' ii. 23), human victims were offered on
this spot even in the end of the third century A.D.
196 THE ATOMIC THEORY OF LUCRETIUS. *
speaking his burning abhorrence of cruelty in religion's name,
he had not lived in vain. Indeed this seems to us the noblest,
bravest thing that he was allowed to do. Surely when man
seeks to propitiate Deity and win his favour by sacrificing his
weaker brothers, this is the incarnation of selfishness. Human
self-seeking can go no farther. What could Lucretius do but
protest against a power like this ? The bare picture is enough,
but his feeling rises to a climax in the single concluding
word,
Tantum religio potuit suadere malorum !
Could there be a God, and leave this appeal unanswered ? Not
in Lucretius's day did the answer come, not till years after he
had died, perhaps, as tradition murmurs, by his own hand and
in a moment of despair. Yet an answer did come, and the next