Lucretius - Nothing Exists Per Se Except Atoms And The Void lyrics

But, now again to weave the tale begun, All nature, then, as self-sustained, consists Of twain of things: of bodies and of void In which they're set, and where they're moved around. For common instinct of our race declares That body of itself exists: unless This primal faith, deep-founded, fail us not, Naught will there be whereunto to appeal On things occult when seeking aught to prove By reasonings of mind. Again, without That place and room, which we do call the inane, Nowhere could bodies then be set, nor go Hither or thither at all—as shown before. Besides, there's naught of which thou canst declare It lives disjoined from body, shut from void— A kind of third in nature. For whatever Exists 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 ever To keep a thing from pa**ing through itself On any side, 'twill be naught else but that Which 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 third Nature amid the number of all things— Remainder none to fall at any time Under our senses, nor be seized and seen By 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 all Can be disjoined and severed from a thing Without a fatal dissolution: such, Weight to the rocks, heat to the fire, and flow To 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 else Which come and go whilst nature stands the same, We're won't, and rightly, to call accidents. Even time exists not of itself; but sense Reads 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 ravishment Of Princess Helen, "is" the siege and sack Of Trojan Town, look out, they force us not To admit these acts existent by themselves, Merely because those races of mankind (Of whom these acts were accidents) long since Irrevocable age has borne away: For all past actions may be said to be But accidents, in one way, of mankind,— In other, of some region of the world. Add, too, had been no matter, and no room Wherein all things go on, the fire of love Upblown by that fair form, the glowing coal Under the Phrygian Alexander's breast, Had ne'er enkindled that renowned strife Of savage war, nor had the wooden horse Involved in flames old Pergama, by a birth At midnight of a brood of the Hellenes. And thus thou canst remark that every act At bottom exists not of itself, nor is As body is, nor has like name with void; But rather of sort more fitly to be called An accident of body, and of place Wherein all things go on.