Free On the Nature of the Universe (Oxford World’s Classics) by Ronald Melville, Don, Peta Fowler

out particles
 
To our senses, and by impact touch our sense of touch.
 
To say moreover that all things are fire,
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And nothing in this world is real except fire,
 
As this man does, seems utter lunacy.
 
He uses the senses to fight against the senses,
 
And undermines what all belief depends on,
 
By which he knows himself this thing that he calls fire.
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He believes that the senses truly perceive fire,
 
But not the rest of things that are no less clear,
 
Which seems to me both futile and insane.
 
For what shall we appeal to? What can there be more certain
 
Than the senses to distinguish false from true?
 
And why should one remove everything else
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And leave only fire, rather than deny
 
That fire exists and leave some other thing?
 
Both propositions seem equally insane.
 
Those therefore who have thought that fire
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Is the substance of things, and that the universe
 
Can consist of fire, and those who have maintained
 
That air is the principle for the growth of things,
 
Or that water forms things by itself alone,
 
Or earth makes all things and changes into them,
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These men have clearly strayed far from the truth.
 
Add those who make the elements twofold
 
Combining air with fire and earth with water,
 
And those who take the view that everything
 
Can grow from four—fire, water, air, and earth.
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Foremost among these is Empedocles
 
Of Acragas, whom that great island bore
 
In its three-cornered coasts, around which flows
 
The Ionian deep with many a twisting firth
 
And splashes salt spray from its green grey waves.
 
Here by a narrow strait the racing sea
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Severs its coastline from the Italian shore;
 
Here ruinous Charybdis seethes, and here
 
Etna’s deep murmurs threaten once again
 
To muster flaming wrath, so that once more
 
Its violence may vomit bursting fires,
 
Once more dark lightning flashes to the sky.
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But though this mighty isle seems wonderful
 
In many ways to nations of mankind,
 
Known as a land to see, rich in good things,
 
And guarded by a mighty force of men,
 
Yet nothing, as I think, more glorious
 
Has it possessed than this man, nor more holy,
 
More wonderful, more precious. From his heart
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Divine, songs ring out clear, and tell the world
 
Of his illustrious discoveries,
 
So that he seems scarce born of human stock.
 
Yet he, and those of whom I spoke before,
 
So much inferior, so much less than he,
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Though much they found out excellent and divine
 
And from their hearts’ deep sanctuary gave forth
 
Answers more holy, on surer reason based,
 
Than those the Delphic prophetess pronounced
 
Amid the laurels of Apollo’s tripod,
 
Yet these about the origin of things
 
Have crashed: great men, and great there was their fall.
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Their first mistake is this: that they assume
 
Movement exists though void has been removed,
 
And allow things to be soft and rarefied—
 
Air, sun, earth, rain, and animals and crops—
 
While not admixing void within their bodies.
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The second, that they acknowledge no limit at all
 
To the splitting of things, nor respite to their breaking,
 
Nor any least of things, the primal atoms;
 
Though we see that all things have an ultimate point
 
Which is the smallest thing our eyes can grasp,
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From which you may deduce that invisible things
 
Have also an ultimate point which is the smallest.
 
Moreover, these first elements of theirs
 
Are soft: things that we see have birth, and bodies
 
Of wholly mortal nature; so by now
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The universe must have returned to nothing,
 
And all things been reborn anew from nothing.
 
That both these views are false you know already.
 
Then too, these elements in many ways
 
Are hostile and pure poison to each other;
 
So when they meet, then either they will perish
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Or fly apart, as we see lightning flashes
 
And thunderstorms and winds all fly apart
 
When they have been driven together by a storm.
 
And then