Confutation of Other Philosophers
And on such grounds it is that those who heldThe stuff of things is fire, and out of fireAlone the cosmic sum is formed, are seenMightily from true reason to have lapsed.Of whom, chief leader to do battle, comesThat Heraclitus, famous for dark speechAmong the silly, not the serious GreeksWho search for truth. For dolts are ever proneThat to bewonder and adore which hidesBeneath distorted words, holding that trueWhich 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 preserveBut 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 naughtThat from such causes could become; much lessMight earth’s variety of things be bornFrom 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 thoughtRising against them, and are loath to leaveAn unmixed void in things, they fear the steepAnd 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 allOne body made, which has no power to dartSwiftly 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 quenchedAnd 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 boundsMeans instant death of that which was before;And thus a somewhat must persist unharmedAmid the world, lest all return to naught,And, born from naught, abundance thrive anew.Now since indeed there are those surest bodiesWhich keep their nature evermore the same,Upon whose going out and coming inAnd 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 availShould some depart and go away, and someBe added new, and some be changed in order,If still all kept their nature of old heat:For whatsoever they created thenWould still in any case be only fire.The truth, I fancy, this: bodies there areWhose clashings, motions, order, posture, shapesProduce the fire and which, by order changed,Do change the nature of the thing produced,And are thereafter nothing like to fireNor whatso else has power to send its bodiesWith impact touching on the senses’ touch.
Again, to say that all things are but fireAnd no true thing in number of all thingsExists but fire, as this same fellow says,Seems crazed folly. For the man himselfAgainst the senses by the senses fights,And hews at that through which is all belief,Through which indeed unto himself is knownThe thing he calls the fire. For, though he thinksThe 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 whatMore certain than our senses can there beWhereby to mark asunder error and truth?Besides, why rather do away with all,And wish to allow heat only, then denyThe fire and still allow all else to be?—Alike the madness either way it seems.Thus whosoe’er have held the stuff of thingsTo be but fire, and out of fire the sum,And whosoever have constituted airAs first beginning of begotten things,And all whoever have held that of itselfWater alone contrives things, or that earthCreateth all and changes things anewTo divers natures, mightily they seemA long way to have wandered from the truth.
Add, too, whoever make the primal stuffTwofold, by joining air to fire, and earthTo water; add who deem that things can growOut of the four—fire, earth, and breath, and rain;As first Empedocles of Acragas,Whom that three-cornered isle of all the landsBore on her coasts, around which flows and flowsIn 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 shoresOf the Italic mainland. Here the wasteCharybdis; and here Aetna rumbles threatsTo gather anew such furies of its flamesAs with its force anew to vomit fires,Belched from its throat, and skyward bear anewIts lightnings’ flash. And though for much she seemThe mighty and the wondrous isle to men,Most rich in all good things, and fortifiedWith generous strength of heroes, she hath ne’erPossessed within her aught of more renown,Nor aught more holy, wonderful, and dearThan this true man. Nay, ever so far and pureThe lofty music of his breast divineLifts up its voice and tells of glories found,That scarce he seems of human stock create.
Yet he and those forementioned (known to beSo 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 basedThan ever the Pythia pronounced for menFrom out the tripod and the Delphian laurel,Have still in matter of first-elementsMade ruin of themselves, and, great men, greatIndeed and heavy there for them the fall:First, because, banishing the void from things,They yet assign them motion, and allowThings 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 endIn cutting bodies down to less and lessNor pause established to their breaking up,They hold there is no minimum in things;Albeit we see the boundary point of aughtIs that which to our senses seems its least,Whereby thou mayst conjecture, that, becauseThe things thou canst not mark have boundary points,They surely have their minimums. Then, too,Since these philosophers ascribe to thingsSoft primal germs, which we behold to beOf 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 themselvesIn many ways poisons and foes to each,Wherefore their congress will destroy them quiteOr drive asunder as we see in stormsRains, 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 germsOf 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 aspectFrom immemorial time. But if percaseThou think’st the frame of fire and earth, the air,The dew of water can in such wise meetAs 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 heapEach thing its proper nature will display,And air will palpably be seen mixed upWith earth together, unquenched heat with water.But primal germs in bringing things to birthMust have a latent, unseen quality,Lest some outstanding alien elementConfuse and minish in the thing createIts proper being.
But these men beginFrom heaven, and from its fires; and first they feignThat fire will turn into the winds of air,Next, that from air the rain begotten is,And earth created out of rain, and thenThat 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 earthUnto 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 boundsMeans instant death of that which was before.Wherefore, since those things, mentioned heretofore,Suffer a changed state, they must deriveFrom others ever unconvertible,Lest an things utterly return to naught.Then why not rather presuppose there beBodies with such a nature furnished forthThat, 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 thingsForevermore be interchanged with all?
“But facts in proof are manifest,” thou sayest,“That all things grow into the winds of airAnd forth from earth are nourished, and unlessThe season favour at propitious hourWith rains enough to set the trees a-reelUnder 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 softRecruited man, his frame would waste away,And life dissolve from out his thews and bones;For out of doubt recruited and fed are weBy certain things, as other things by others.Because in many ways the many germsCommon to many things are mixed in things,No wonder ’tis that therefore divers thingsBy divers things are nourished. And, again,Often it matters vastly with what others,In what positions the primordial germsAre bound together, and what motions, too,They give and get among themselves; for theseSame germs do put together sky, sea, lands,Rivers, and sun, grains, trees, and breathing things,But yet commixed they are in divers modesWith divers things, forever as they move.Nay, thou beholdest in our verses hereElements many, common to many worlds,Albeit thou must confess each verse, each wordFrom one another differs both in senseAnd ring of sound—so much the elementsCan bring about by change of order alone.But those which are the primal germs of thingsHave power to work more combinations still,Whence divers things can be produced in turn.
Now let us also take for scrutinyThe homeomeria of Anaxagoras,So called by Greeks, for which our pauper-speechYieldeth no name in the Italian tongue,Although the thing itself is not o’erhardFor explanation. First, then, when he speaksOf this homeomeria of things, he thinksBones 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 accountsTo err no less than those we named before.Add too: these germs he feigns are far too frail—If they be germs primordial furnished forthWith 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 crushUnder 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 beAt bottom as mortal as whate’er we markTo perish by force before our gazing eyes.But my appeal is to the proofs aboveThat things cannot fall back to naught, nor yetFrom naught increase. And now again, since foodAugments and nourishes the human frame,’Tis thine to know our veins and blood and bonesAnd thews are formed of particles unlikeTo them in kind; or if they say all foodsAre of mixed substance having in themselvesSmall bodies of thews, and bones, and also veinsAnd particles of blood, then every food,Solid or liquid, must itself be thoughtAs made and mixed of things unlike in kind—Of bones, of thews, of ichor and of blood.Again, if all the bodies which upgrowFrom earth, are first within the earth, then earthMust be compound of alien substances.Which spring and bloom abroad from out the earth.Transfer the argument, and thou may’st useThe selfsame words: if flame and smoke and ashStill lurk unseen within the wood, the woodMust be compound of alien substancesWhich spring from out the wood.
Right here remainsA certain slender means to skulk from truth,Which Anaxagoras takes unto himself,Who holds that all things lurk commixed with allWhile that one only comes to view, of whichThe 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 grainsShould oft, when crunched between the might of stones,Give forth a sign of blood, or of aught elseWhich in our human frame is fed; and thatRock rubbed on rock should yield a gory ooze.Likewise the herbs ought oft to give forth dropsOf sweet milk, flavoured like the uddered sheep’s;Indeed we ought to find, when crumbling upThe earthy clods, there herbs, and grains, and leaves,All sorts dispersed minutely in the soil;Lastly we ought to find in cloven woodAshes 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 thingsThuswise; 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 rubbedOne 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 whenRubbing together they together flow,They start the conflagrations in the forests.Whereas if flame, already fashioned, layStored up within the forests, then the firesCould not for any time be kept unseen,But would be laying all the wildwood wasteAnd 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 germsAre bound together? And what motions, too,They give and get among themselves? how, hence,The same, if altered ‘mongst themselves, can bodyBoth igneous and ligneous objects forth—Precisely as these words themselves are madeBy somewhat altering their elements,Although we mark with name indeed distinctThe igneous from the ligneous. Once again,If thou suppose whatever thou beholdest,Among all visible objects, cannot be,Unless thou feign bodies of matter endowedWith a like nature,—by thy vain deviceFor 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.