Lucretius, On the Nature of Things

“Happy is he who was able to know the causes of things, and who trampled beneath his feet all fears, inexorable fate, and the roar of devouring hell.” Virgil, Georgics, 2.490-492

“(1) Happy is he who was able (2) to know the causes of things, and who (3) trampled beneath his feet all fears, (4) inexorable fate, and the roar of (5) devouring hell.” Happiness: maximize pleasure, minimize pain; Knowledge: an explanation of everything, the cosmos; Against fear, especially fear of death; Against fate, for free will; Against hell, afterlife; for mortality of the soul;

Parmenides: “What-is is ungenerated and imperishable, a whole of a single kind, unshaken and complete.” —> sense experience vs. logos, truth

Parmenides: “What-is is ungenerated and imperishable, a whole of a single kind, unshaken and complete.” —> sense experience vs. logos, truth Heraclitus: “Changing it rests.” —> sense experience + logos = truth

Parmenides: “What-is is ungenerated and imperishable, a whole of a single kind, unshaken and complete.” —> sense experience vs. logos, truth Heraclitus: “Changing it rests.” —> sense experience + logos = truth Lucretius: “It is by means of invisible, indivisible particles that nature does her work.” 1.328. —> from sense experience to truth

Of this process, as I recall, a model and image always exists and is present before our eyes. For gaze closely, whenever the rays of the sun enter and pour their light through the dark places of houses. You will see many minute bodies mixed in many ways through empty space in the very light of the rays, and, as if in an unending struggle, giving rise to battles and fights, struggling in squadrons and never taking a rest, driven on by their frequent meetings and partings.

So you can conjecture from this how the first beginnings of things are always tossed about in the great void, at least in so far as a small thing is able to provide model of great things and the traces of a concept. It is even more important that you turn your attention to these bodies that are seen to create disturbances in the rays of the sun, because such disturbances indicate that there are also motions of matter lurking below, hidden and unseen. For you will see many of them there, struck by invisible blows, change direction and, beaten back again, be turned now this way, now that, everywhere in all directions.

Of course this wandering of them comes from the first beginnings. For first the first bodies of things are moved by themselves; next those bodies, which are composed of small compounds and are so to speak nearest to the strength of the first beginnings, are struck by their invisible blows and moved, and they themselves in their turn stir up bodies that are slightly bigger. So motion arises from the first beginnings and gradually reaches the level of our senses, so that those things are moved also which we are able to see in the light of the sun, yet by what blows they do this is not readily apparent. 1.112-141

Nothing can come from nothing. Nothing can be reduced to nothing. (see 1.150 and 1.215-216)

It used to be that human life, polluted, was lying in the dirt before our eyes, crushed by the weight of religion, which stretched out its head on display from the regions of heaven, threatening mortals from above with its horrible-looking face. It was a Greek man who first dared to raise his mortal eyes against religion, and who first fought back against it. Neither the stories about the gods, nor the thunderbolts, nor the sky with its threatening rumbles held him back, but provoked all the more the fierce sharpness of his mind, so that he desired to be the first to shatter the imprisoning bolts of the gates of nature.

As a result the vital force of his mind was victorious, and he traveled far beyond the flaming walls of the world and trekked throughout the measureless universe in mind and spirit. As a victor he brings back from there the knowledge of what can come to be, what cannot, in short, by what process each thing has its power limited, and its deep-set boundary stone. And so the tables are turned. Religion lies crushed beneath our feet, and his victory raises us to the sky. 1.62-79

For it must be that the entire nature of the gods spends everlasting time enjoying perfect peace, far removed and long separated from our concerns. For free from all anxiety, free from dangers, powerful in its own resources, having no need of us, it is not won over by the good things we do nor touched by anger. 1.44-49

In this matter there is this, too, that I want you to understand, that when the first bodies are moving straight downward through the void by their own weight, at times completely undetermined and in undetermined places they swerve a little from their course, but only so much as you could call a change of motion. Because unless they were accustomed to swerving, all would fall downwards like drops of rain through the deep void, nor would a collision occur, nor would a blow be produced by the first beginnings. Thus nature would never have created anything. 2.216-224

And next if every motion is always linked, and a new one always arises from an old one in sure succession, and if by declining the primary bodies do not make a certain beginning of motion to burst the laws of fate, so that cause does not follow cause from infinity, from where does there arise for living creatures throughout the world, from where, I say, is this free will, torn from fate, by which we go wherever pleasure leads each of us, and likewise decline our motion at no fixed time or fixed region of space, but where the mind itself carries us? 2.252-260

Death is nothing to us. 3.830