Nothing Exists Per Se Except Atoms and the Void
But, now again to weave the tale begun,All nature, then, as self-sustained, consistsOf twain of things: of bodies and of voidIn which they’re set, and where they’re moved around.For common instinct of our race declaresThat body of itself exists: unlessThis primal faith, deep-founded, fail us not,Naught will there be whereunto to appealOn things occult when seeking aught to proveBy reasonings of mind. Again, withoutThat place and room, which we do call the inane,Nowhere could bodies then be set, nor goHither or thither at all—as shown before.Besides, there’s naught of which thou canst declareIt lives disjoined from body, shut from void—A kind of third in nature. For whateverExists must be a somewhat; and the same,If tangible, however fight and slight,Will yet increase the count of body’s sum,With its own augmentation big or small;But, if intangible and powerless everTo keep a thing from passing through itselfOn any side, ‘twill be naught else but thatWhich we do call the empty, the inane.Again, whate’er exists, as of itself,Must either act or suffer action on it,Or else be that wherein things move and be:Naught, saving body, acts, is acted on;Naught but the inane can furnish room. And thus,Beside the inane and bodies, is no thirdNature amid the number of all things—Remainder none to fall at any timeUnder our senses, nor be seized and seenBy any man through reasonings of mind.Name o’er creation with what names thou wilt,Thou’lt find but properties of those first twain,Or see but accidents those twain produce.
A property is that which not at allCan be disjoined and severed from a thingWithout a fatal dissolution: such,Weight to the rocks, heat to the fire, and flowTo the wide waters, touch to corporal things,Intangibility to the viewless void.But state of slavery, pauperhood, and wealth,Freedom, and war, and concord, and all elseWhich come and go whilst nature stands the same,We’re wont, and rightly, to call accidents.Even time exists not of itself; but senseReads out of things what happened long ago,What presses now, and what shall follow after:No man, we must admit, feels time itself,Disjoined from motion and repose of things.Thus, when they say there “is” the ravishmentOf Princess Helen, “is” the siege and sackOf Trojan Town, look out, they force us notTo admit these acts existent by themselves,Merely because those races of mankind(Of whom these acts were accidents) long sinceIrrevocable age has borne away:For all past actions may be said to beBut accidents, in one way, of mankind,—In other, of some region of the world.Add, too, had been no matter, and no roomWherein all things go on, the fire of loveUpblown by that fair form, the glowing coalUnder the Phrygian Alexander’s breast,Had ne’er enkindled that renowned strifeOf savage war, nor had the wooden horseInvolved in flames old Pergama, by a birthAt midnight of a brood of the Hellenes.And thus thou canst remark that every actAt bottom exists not of itself, nor isAs body is, nor has like name with void;But rather of sort more fitly to be calledAn accident of body, and of placeWherein all things go on.