Thou seest how far each doctrine stands from truth. And, next, these bodies are among themselves
In many ways poisons and foes to each, Wherefore their congress will destroy them quite Or drive asunder as we see in storms
Rains, 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 germs
Of 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 aspect From immemorial time. But if percase
Thou think'st the frame of fire and earth, the air,
The dew of water can in such wise meet As 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 heap
Each thing its proper nature will display, And air will palpably be seen mixed up
With earth together, unquenched heat with water. But primal germs in bringing things to birth
Must have a latent, unseen quality, Lest some outstanding alien element Confuse and minish in the thing create Its proper being.
But these men begin
From heaven, and from its fires; and first they feign
That fire will turn into the winds of air, Next, that from air the rain begotten is, And earth created out of rain, and then
That 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 earth
Unto 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 bounds
19
Means instant death of that which was before. Wherefore, since those things, mentioned heretofore, Suffer a changed state, they must derive
From others ever unconvertible,
Lest an things utterly return to naught. Then why not rather presuppose there be Bodies with such a nature furnished forth That, if perchance they have created fire, Can still (by virtue of a few withdrawn,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 things Forevermore be interchanged with all?
"But facts in proof are manifest," thou sayest, "That all things grow into the winds of air
And forth from earth are nourished, and unless
The season favour at propitious hour With rains enough to set the trees a-reel Under 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 soft Recruited man, his frame would waste away,
And life dissolve from out his thews and bones; For out of doubt recruited and fed are we
By certain things, as other things by others. Because in many ways the many germs Common to many things are mixed in things, No wonder 'tis that therefore divers things
By divers things are nourished. And, again, Often it matters vastly with what others,
In what positions the primordial germs
Are bound together, and what motions, too, They give and get among themselves; for these Same germs do put together sky, sea, lands,
Rivers, and sun, grains, trees, and breathing things, But yet commixed they are in divers modes
With divers things, forever as they move. Nay, thou beholdest in our verses here Elements many, common to many worlds,
Albeit thou must confess each verse, each word
From one another differs both in sense And ring of sound--so much the elements Can bring about by change of order alone.
But those which are the primal germs of things Have power to work more combinations still, Whence divers things can be produced in turn.
Now let us also take for scrutiny
The homeomeria of Anaxagoras,
So called by Greeks, for which our pauper-speech
Yieldeth no name in the Italian tongue, Although the thing itself is not o'erhard
For explanation. First, then, when he speaks
Of this homeomeria of things, he thinks
Bones to be sprung from littlest bones minute, And from minute and littlest flesh all flesh, And blood created out of drops of blood,
20
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 accounts To err no less than those we named before.
Add too: these germs he feigns are far too frail-- If they be germs primordial furnished forth
With 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 crush Under 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 be
At bottom as mortal as whate'er we mark To perish by force before our gazing eyes. But my appeal is to the proofs above
That things cannot fall back to naught, nor yet From naught increase. And now again, since food Augments and nourishes the human frame,
'Tis thine to know our veins and blood and bones
And thews are formed of particles unlike
To them in kind; or if they say all foods
Are of mixed substance having in themselves Small bodies of thews, and bones, and also veins And particles of blood, then every food,
Solid or liquid, must itself be thought
As made and mixed of things unlike in kind-- Of bones, of thews, of ichor and of blood. Again, if all the bodies which upgrow
From earth, are first within the earth, then earth
Must be compound of alien substances.
Which spring and bloom abroad from out the earth. Transfer the argument, and thou may'st use
The selfsame words: if flame and smoke and ash
Still lurk unseen within the wood, the wood Must be compound of alien substances Which spring from out the wood.
Right here remains
A certain slender means to skulk from truth, Which Anaxagoras takes unto himself,
Who holds that all things lurk commixed with all
While that one only comes to view, of which
The 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 grains
Should oft, when crunched between the might of stones, Give forth a sign of blood, or of aught else
Which in our human frame is fed; and that Rock rubbed on rock should yield a gory ooze. Likewise the herbs ought oft to give forth drops Of sweet milk, flavoured like the uddered sheep's; Indeed we ought to find, when crumbling up
21