Читать книгу On the Nature of Things - Тит Лукреций Кар - Страница 6

     And on such grounds it is that those who held

     The stuff of things is fire, and out of fire

     Alone the cosmic sum is formed, are seen

     Mightily from true reason to have lapsed.

     Of whom, chief leader to do battle, comes

     That Heraclitus, famous for dark speech

     Among the silly, not the serious Greeks

     Who search for truth. For dolts are ever prone

     That to bewonder and adore which hides

     Beneath distorted words, holding that true

     Which sweetly tickles in their stupid ears,

     Or which is rouged in finely finished phrase.

     For how, I ask, can things so varied be,

     If formed of fire, single and pure? No whit

     'Twould help for fire to be condensed or thinned,

     If all the parts of fire did still preserve

     But fire's own nature, seen before in gross.

     The heat were keener with the parts compressed,

     Milder, again, when severed or dispersed—

     And more than this thou canst conceive of naught

     That from such causes could become; much less

     Might earth's variety of things be born

     From any fires soever, dense or rare.

     This too: if they suppose a void in things,

     Then fires can be condensed and still left rare;

     But since they see such opposites of thought

     Rising against them, and are loath to leave

     An unmixed void in things, they fear the steep

     And lose the road of truth. Nor do they see,

     That, if from things we take away the void,

     All things are then condensed, and out of all

     One body made, which has no power to dart

     Swiftly from out itself not anything—

     As throws the fire its light and warmth around,

     Giving thee proof its parts are not compact.

     But if perhaps they think, in other wise,

     Fires through their combinations can be quenched

     And change their substance, very well: behold,

     If fire shall spare to do so in no part,

     Then heat will perish utterly and all,

     And out of nothing would the world be formed.

     For change in anything from out its bounds

     Means instant death of that which was before;

     And thus a somewhat must persist unharmed

     Amid the world, lest all return to naught,

     And, born from naught, abundance thrive anew.

     Now since indeed there are those surest bodies

     Which keep their nature evermore the same,

     Upon whose going out and coming in

     And changed order things their nature change,

     And all corporeal substances transformed,

     'Tis thine to know those primal bodies, then,

     Are not of fire. For 'twere of no avail

     Should some depart and go away, and some

     Be added new, and some be changed in order,

     If still all kept their nature of old heat:

     For whatsoever they created then

     Would still in any case be only fire.

     The truth, I fancy, this: bodies there are

     Whose clashings, motions, order, posture, shapes

     Produce the fire and which, by order changed,

     Do change the nature of the thing produced,

     And are thereafter nothing like to fire

     Nor whatso else has power to send its bodies

     With impact touching on the senses' touch.

     Again, to say that all things are but fire

     And no true thing in number of all things

     Exists but fire, as this same fellow says,

     Seems crazed folly. For the man himself

     Against the senses by the senses fights,

     And hews at that through which is all belief,

     Through which indeed unto himself is known

     The thing he calls the fire. For, though he thinks

     The senses truly can perceive the fire,

     He thinks they cannot as regards all else,

     Which still are palpably as clear to sense—

     To me a thought inept and crazy too.

     For whither shall we make appeal? for what

     More certain than our senses can there be

     Whereby to mark asunder error and truth?

     Besides, why rather do away with all,

     And wish to allow heat only, then deny

     The fire and still allow all else to be?—

     Alike the madness either way it seems.

     Thus whosoe'er have held the stuff of things

     To be but fire, and out of fire the sum,

     And whosoever have constituted air

     As first beginning of begotten things,

     And all whoever have held that of itself

     Water alone contrives things, or that earth

     Createth all and changes things anew

     To divers natures, mightily they seem

     A long way to have wandered from the truth.

     Add, too, whoever make the primal stuff

     Twofold, by joining air to fire, and earth

     To water; add who deem that things can grow

     Out of the four—fire, earth, and breath, and rain;

     As first Empedocles of Acragas,

     Whom that three-cornered isle of all the lands

     Bore on her coasts, around which flows and flows

     In mighty bend and bay the Ionic seas,

     Splashing the brine from off their gray-green waves.

     Here, billowing onward through the narrow straits,

     Swift ocean cuts her boundaries from the shores

     Of the Italic mainland. Here the waste

     Charybdis; and here Aetna rumbles threats

     To gather anew such furies of its flames

     As with its force anew to vomit fires,

     Belched from its throat, and skyward bear anew

     Its lightnings' flash. And though for much she seem

     The mighty and the wondrous isle to men,

     Most rich in all good things, and fortified

     With generous strength of heroes, she hath ne'er

     Possessed within her aught of more renown,

     Nor aught more holy, wonderful, and dear

     Than this true man. Nay, ever so far and pure

     The lofty music of his breast divine

     Lifts up its voice and tells of glories found,

     That scarce he seems of human stock create.

     Yet he and those forementioned (known to be

     So far beneath him, less than he in all),

     Though, as discoverers of much goodly truth,

     They gave, as 'twere from out of the heart's own shrine,

     Responses holier and soundlier based

     Than ever the Pythia pronounced for men

     From out the triped and the Delphian laurel,

     Have still in matter of first-elements

     Made ruin of themselves, and, great men, great

     Indeed and heavy there for them the fall:

     First, because, banishing the void from things,

     They yet assign them motion, and allow

     Things soft and loosely textured to exist,

     As air, dew, fire, earth, animals, and grains,

     Without admixture of void amid their frame.

     Next, because, thinking there can be no end

     In cutting bodies down to less and less

     Nor pause established to their breaking up,

     They hold there is no minimum in things;

     Albeit we see the boundary point of aught

     Is that which to our senses seems its least,

     Whereby thou mayst conjecture, that, because

     The things thou canst not mark have boundary points,

     They surely have their minimums. Then, too,

     Since these philosophers ascribe to things

     Soft primal germs, which we behold to be

     Of birth and body mortal, thus, throughout,

     The sum of things must be returned to naught,

     And, born from naught, abundance thrive anew—

     Thou seest how far each doctrine stands from truth.

     And, next, these bodies are among themselves

     In many ways poisons and foes to each,

     Wherefore their congress will destroy them quite

     Or drive asunder as we see in storms

     Rains, winds, and lightnings all asunder fly.

     Thus too, if all things are create of four,

     And all again dissolved into the four,

     How can the four be called the primal germs

     Of things, more than all things themselves be thought,

     By retroversion, primal germs of them?

     For ever alternately are both begot,

     With interchange of nature and aspect

     From immemorial time. But if percase

     Thou think'st the frame of fire and earth, the air,

     The dew of water can in such wise meet

     As not by mingling to resign their nature,

     From them for thee no world can be create—

     No thing of breath, no stock or stalk of tree:

     In the wild congress of this varied heap

     Each thing its proper nature will display,

     And air will palpably be seen mixed up

     With earth together, unquenched heat with water.

     But primal germs in bringing things to birth

     Must have a latent, unseen quality,

     Lest some outstanding alien element

     Confuse and minish in the thing create

     Its proper being.

                        But these men begin

     From heaven, and from its fires; and first they feign

     That fire will turn into the winds of air,

     Next, that from air the rain begotten is,

     And earth created out of rain, and then

     That all, reversely, are returned from earth—

     The moisture first, then air thereafter heat—

     And that these same ne'er cease in interchange,

     To go their ways from heaven to earth, from earth

     Unto the stars of the aethereal world—

     Which in no wise at all the germs can do.

     Since an immutable somewhat still must be,

     Lest all things utterly be sped to naught;

     For change in anything from out its bounds

     Means instant death of that which was before.

     Wherefore, since those things, mentioned heretofore,

     Suffer a changed state, they must derive

     From others ever unconvertible,

     Lest an things utterly return to naught.

     Then why not rather presuppose there be

     Bodies with such a nature furnished forth

     That, if perchance they have created fire,

     Can still (by virtue of a few withdrawn,

     Or added few, and motion and order changed)

     Fashion the winds of air, and thus all things

     Forevermore be interchanged with all?

     "But facts in proof are manifest," thou sayest,

     "That all things grow into the winds of air

     And forth from earth are nourished, and unless

     The season favour at propitious hour

     With rains enough to set the trees a-reel

     Under the soak of bulking thunderheads,

     And sun, for its share, foster and give heat,

     No grains, nor trees, nor breathing things can grow."

     True—and unless hard food and moisture soft

     Recruited man, his frame would waste away,

     And life dissolve from out his thews and bones;

     For out of doubt recruited and fed are we

     By certain things, as other things by others.

     Because in many ways the many germs

     Common to many things are mixed in things,

     No wonder 'tis that therefore divers things

     By divers things are nourished. And, again,

     Often it matters vastly with what others,

     In what positions the primordial germs

     Are bound together, and what motions, too,

     They give and get among themselves; for these

     Same germs do put together sky, sea, lands,

     Rivers, and sun, grains, trees, and breathing things,

     But yet commixed they are in divers modes

     With divers things, forever as they move.

     Nay, thou beholdest in our verses here

     Elements many, common to many worlds,

     Albeit thou must confess each verse, each word

     From one another differs both in sense

     And ring of sound—so much the elements

     Can bring about by change of order alone.

     But those which are the primal germs of things

     Have power to work more combinations still,

     Whence divers things can be produced in turn.

     Now let us also take for scrutiny

     The homeomeria of Anaxagoras,

     So called by Greeks, for which our pauper-speech

     Yieldeth no name in the Italian tongue,

     Although the thing itself is not o'erhard

     For explanation. First, then, when he speaks

     Of this homeomeria of things, he thinks

     Bones to be sprung from littlest bones minute,

     And from minute and littlest flesh all flesh,

     And blood created out of drops of blood,

     Conceiving gold compact of grains of gold,

     And earth concreted out of bits of earth,

     Fire made of fires, and water out of waters,

     Feigning the like with all the rest of stuff.

     Yet he concedes not any void in things,

     Nor any limit to cutting bodies down.

     Wherefore to me he seems on both accounts

     To err no less than those we named before.

     Add too: these germs he feigns are far too frail—

     If they be germs primordial furnished forth

     With but same nature as the things themselves,

     And travail and perish equally with those,

     And no rein curbs them from annihilation.

     For which will last against the grip and crush

     Under the teeth of death? the fire? the moist?

     Or else the air? which then? the blood? the bones?

     No one, methinks, when every thing will be

     At bottom as mortal as whate'er we mark

     To perish by force before our gazing eyes.

     But my appeal is to the proofs above

     That things cannot fall back to naught, nor yet

     From naught increase. And now again, since food

     Augments and nourishes the human frame,

     'Tis thine to know our veins and blood and bones

     And thews are formed of particles unlike

     To them in kind; or if they say all foods

     Are of mixed substance having in themselves

     Small bodies of thews, and bones, and also veins

     And particles of blood, then every food,

     Solid or liquid, must itself be thought

     As made and mixed of things unlike in kind—

     Of bones, of thews, of ichor and of blood.

     Again, if all the bodies which upgrow

     From earth, are first within the earth, then earth

     Must be compound of alien substances.

     Which spring and bloom abroad from out the earth.

     Transfer the argument, and thou may'st use

     The selfsame words: if flame and smoke and ash

     Still lurk unseen within the wood, the wood

     Must be compound of alien substances

     Which spring from out the wood.

                               Right here remains

     A certain slender means to skulk from truth,

     Which Anaxagoras takes unto himself,

     Who holds that all things lurk commixed with all

     While that one only comes to view, of which

     The bodies exceed in number all the rest,

     And lie more close to hand and at the fore—

     A notion banished from true reason far.

     For then 'twere meet that kernels of the grains

     Should oft, when crunched between the might of stones,

     Give forth a sign of blood, or of aught else

     Which in our human frame is fed; and that

     Rock rubbed on rock should yield a gory ooze.

     Likewise the herbs ought oft to give forth drops

     Of sweet milk, flavoured like the uddered sheep's;

     Indeed we ought to find, when crumbling up

     The earthy clods, there herbs, and grains, and leaves,

     All sorts dispersed minutely in the soil;

     Lastly we ought to find in cloven wood

     Ashes and smoke and bits of fire there hid.

     But since fact teaches this is not the case,

     'Tis thine to know things are not mixed with things

     Thuswise; but seeds, common to many things,

     Commixed in many ways, must lurk in things.

     "But often it happens on skiey hills" thou sayest,

     "That neighbouring tops of lofty trees are rubbed

     One against other, smote by the blustering south,

     Till all ablaze with bursting flower of flame."

     Good sooth—yet fire is not ingraft in wood,

     But many are the seeds of heat, and when

     Rubbing together they together flow,

     They start the conflagrations in the forests.

     Whereas if flame, already fashioned, lay

     Stored up within the forests, then the fires

     Could not for any time be kept unseen,

     But would be laying all the wildwood waste

     And burning all the boscage. Now dost see

     (Even as we said a little space above)

     How mightily it matters with what others,

     In what positions these same primal germs

     Are bound together? And what motions, too,

     They give and get among themselves? how, hence,

     The same, if altered 'mongst themselves, can body

     Both igneous and ligneous objects forth—

     Precisely as these words themselves are made

     By somewhat altering their elements,

     Although we mark with name indeed distinct

     The igneous from the ligneous. Once again,

     If thou suppose whatever thou beholdest,

     Among all visible objects, cannot be,

     Unless thou feign bodies of matter endowed

     With a like nature,—by thy vain device

     For thee will perish all the germs of things:

     'Twill come to pass they'll laugh aloud, like men,

     Shaken asunder by a spasm of mirth,

     Or moisten with salty tear-drops cheeks and chins.