The Roman Poets of the Republic Part 36

Immortalia mortali sermone notantes[27].

The views of Lucretius as to the natural origin of life, and the progressive advance of man from the rudest condition by the exercise of his senses and acc.u.mulated experience,--his denial of final causes universally, and specially in the human faculties,--his resolution of our knowledge into the intimations of sense,--his materialism and consequent denial of immortality,--and his utilitarianism in morals,--all present striking parallels to the opinions of one of the great schools of modern thought. At v. 875 there is a pa.s.sage concerning the preservation and destruction of species, originally suggested by Empedocles,--which shows that the idea of the struggle for existence and of the survival of those species best fitted for the conditions of that struggle was familiar to ancient thinkers. It is there observed that those species alone have escaped destruction which possess some natural weapon of defence, or which are useful to man.

Of others that could neither live by themselves nor were maintained by human protection, it is said--

Scilicet haec aliis praedae lucroque iacebant Indupedita suis fatalibus omnia vinclis, Donec ad interitum genus id natura redegit[28].

The attempt to trace the origin of all supernatural belief to the impressions made by dreams, the explanation given of the first manifestation of the humaner sentiments, of the beginning of language, and of the whole condition of 'primitive man,' are in conformity with the teaching of the most popular exponent of the doctrine of evolution in the present day.

But altogether apart from the truth and falsehood, the right and wrong tendencies of his system of philosophy, our feeling of personal interest in the poet is strengthened by noting the power of reasoning, observation, and expression put forth by him through the whole course of his argument. The pervading characteristic of Lucretius is the 'vivida vis animi.' The freshness of feeling and vividness of apprehension denoted by the words,

Mente vigenti Avia Pieridum peragro loca,

are as remarkable in the processes of his intellect as of his imagination.

The pa.s.sionate intensity of his nature has left its impress on the enunciation of his physical as well as of his moral doctrines. He has a thoroughly logical grasp of his subject as a whole. He shows the capacity of unfolding it and marshalling all his arguments in symmetrical order, and of arranging in due subordination vast ma.s.ses of details. Vigour in acquiring and tenacity in retaining the knowledge of facts are combined with a high organising faculty. He has also, beyond any other Roman writer, a power of a.n.a.lysing and comprehending abstract ideas, such as that of the infinite, of s.p.a.ce and time, of causation and the like, and of keeping the consequences involved in these ideas present to his mind through long-sustained processes of reasoning. He alone among his countrymen possessed, if not the faculty of original speculation, the genuine philosophic impulse, and the powers of mind demanded for abstruse and systematic thinking.

This vigour of understanding is displayed in many processes of deductive reasoning, in the power of seizing some general principle underlying diverse phenomena, in the use of a.n.a.logies by which he ill.u.s.trates the argument and advances from known to unknown causes and from things within the cognisance of our senses to those beyond their range, and in the clearness and variety of his observation.

His system cannot be called either purely inductive or purely deductive, though it is more of the former than of the latter. He argues with great force both from a large and varied ma.s.s of facts to general laws and from general principles to facts involved in them.

The best examples of his power of following abstract ideas into their consequences may be found in the first two books, where he establishes the existence of vacuum, the infinity of s.p.a.ce and of the atoms, the limitations of the form of the atoms and the like. The reasoning at i.

298-328 where the existence of invisible bodies is established affords a good instance of his power of recognising a common principle involved in a great number and variety of phenomena.

The vigour with which he reasons from known to unknown facts and causes may be judged most fairly by his arguments on the progress of society, where he is more on an equality with modern speculation. He discards, altogether, as might be expected, the fancies concerning a heroic or a golden age, and a.s.sumes as his data the facts of human nature as observed in his own day. The grounds from which he starts, his method of reasoning, and the nature of his conclusions remind a reader of the positive tendencies of Thucydides, as they are displayed in the introduction to his history. The importance of personal qualities, such as beauty, strength, and power of mind, in the earliest stage of civil society, the influence of acc.u.mulated wealth at a later period, the causes of the establishment and overthrow of tyrannies and of the rise of commonwealths in their room, are all set forth with a degree of strong sense and historical sagacity, such as no other Roman writer has shown in similar investigations. The inferiority even of Tacitus in his occasional digressions into the philosophy of history is very marked. On such topics, where the data were accessible to the natural faculties of observation and inference, and where conclusions were sought which, without aiming at definite certainty, should yet be true in the main, the reader of Lucretius has no sense of that wasted ingenuity which he often feels in following the investigations into some of the primary conditions of the atoms, the component elements of the soul, the process by which the world was formed, or the causes of electric or volcanic phenomena.

Lucretius makes a copious, and often a very happy use, of a.n.a.logies, both in the ill.u.s.tration of his philosophy, and in pa.s.sages of the highest poetical power. Some of the most striking of the former kind have already been noticed as sources of error, or at least of disguising ignorance, in his reasoning, viz. those founded on the supposed parallel between the world and the human body; others again are employed with force and ingenuity in support of various positions in his argument. Among these may be mentioned his comparison of the effect of various combinations of the same letters in forming different words, with that of the various combinations of similar atoms in forming different objects in nature. So too the ceaseless motion of the atoms is brought visibly before the imagination by the a.n.a.logy of the motes dancing in the sunbeam. There is something striking in the comparison of the human body immediately after death to wine 'c.u.m Bacchi flos evanuit,' and again, in that of the relation of body and soul to the relation of frankincense and its odour--

E thuris glaebis evellere odorem Haud facile est quin intereat natura quoque eius[29].

But this faculty of his understanding is in general so united with the imaginative feeling through which he discerns the vital ident.i.ty of the most diverse manifestations of some common principle, that it can best be ill.u.s.trated in connexion with the poetical, as distinct from the logical, merits of the work.

So also it is difficult to separate his faculty of clear, exact, and vivid observation from his poetical perception of the life and beauty of Nature. His powers of observation were, however, stimulated and directed by scientific as well as poetic interest in phenomena. From the wide scope of his philosophy he was led to examine the greatest variety of facts, physical as well as moral. His sense of the immensity of the universe led him to contemplate the largest and widest operations of Nature,--such as the movements of the heavenly bodies, the recurrence of the seasons, the forces of great storms, volcanoes, etc.; while, again, the theory of the invisible atoms drew his attention to the minutest processes of Nature, in so far as they can be perceived or inferred without the appliances of modern science.

Thus, for instance, in a long pa.s.sage beginning--

Denique fluctifrago suspensae in litore vestes[30]

he shows by an acc.u.mulation of instances that there are many invisible bodies, the existence of which is inferred from visible effects. In other places he draws attention to the cla.s.s of facts which have been the basis of the modern science of geology,--such as the mark of rivers slowly wearing away their banks,--of walls on the sea-sh.o.r.e mouldering from the long-continued effects of the exhalations from the sea,--of the fall of great rocks from the mountains under the wear and tear of ages.

Again, the argument is frequently ill.u.s.trated by observation of the habits of various animals. In these pa.s.sages Lucretius shows the curiosity of a naturalist, as well as the sympathetic feeling and insight of a poet. How graphic, for instance, is his description of dogs following up the scent of their game--

Errant saepe canes itaque et vestigia quaerunt[31].

How happily their characteristics are struck off in the line--

At levisomna canum fido c.u.m pectore corda[32].

The various cries and habits of birds are often observed and described, as--

Et validis cycni torrentibus ex Heliconis c.u.m liquidam tollunt lugubri voce querellam[33];

and again--

Parvus ut est cycni melior canor ille gruum quam Clamor in aetheriis dispersus nubibus austri[34].

The description of sea-birds,

Mergique marinis Fluctibus in salso victum vitamque petentes[35],

recalls the vivid and natural life of those that haunted the isle of Calypso--

[Greek: tanyglossoi te koronai einaliai tesin te thala.s.sia erga memelen[36].]

His lively personal observation and active interest in the casual objects presented to his eyes in the course of his walks are seen in such pa.s.sages as--

c.u.m lubrica serpens Exuit in spinis vestem; nam saepe videmus Illorum spoliis vepres volitantibus auctas[37].

There is also much truth and liveliness of observation in his notices of psychological and physiological facts; as in those pa.s.sages where he establishes the connexion between mind and body, and in his account of the senses. With what a graphic touch does he paint the outward effects of death[38], the decay of the faculties with age, and the madness that overtakes the mind--

Adde furorem animi proprium atque oblivia rerum, Adde quod in nigras lethargi mergitur undas[39];

the bodily waste, produced by long-continuous speaking--

Perpetuus sermo nigrai noctis ad umbram Aurorae perductus ab exoriente nitore[40];

the reflex action of the senses, produced by the nervous strain of witnessing games and spectacles for many days in succession; the insensibility to the pain of the severest wounds in the excitement of battle! In his account of the plague of Athens, in which he enters into much greater detail than Thucydides, he displays the minute observation of a physician, as well as the profound thought of a moralist.

The 'vivida vis' of his understanding is apparent also in the clearness and consecutiveness of his philosophical style. His complaint of 'the poverty of his native tongue' is directed against the capacities of the Latin language for scientific, not for poetical expression--

Nunc et Anaxagorae scrutemur h.o.m.oeomerian Quam Grai memorant nec nostra dicere lingua Concedit n.o.bis patrii sermonis egestas[41].

That language, which gives admirable expression to the dictates of common sense and to the dignified emotions which inspire the conduct of great affairs, is ill adapted both for the expression of abstract ideas and for maintaining a long process of connected argument.

Lucretius has occasionally to meet the first difficulty by the adoption of Graecisms, and the second by some sacrifice of artistic elegance. Thus he uses _omne_ for [Greek: to pan] (II. 1108), _esse_, again, for [Greek: to einai], and the like. Something of a formal and technical character appears in the links by which his argument is kept together, as in the constantly recurring use of certain connecting particles, such as the 'etenim,' 'quippe ubi,' 'quod genus,' 'amplius hoc,' 'huc accedit,' and the like. Virgil has retained some of the most striking of these connecting formulae, such as 'contemplator item,' 'nonne vides,' etc.; but, as was natural in a poem setting forth precepts and not proofs, he uses them much more sparingly and with more careful selection. As used by Lucretius, they add to our sense of the vividness of the book, of the constant personal address of the author, and of his ardent polemical tone. They also keep the framework of the argument more compact and distinct: but they bring into greater prominence the artistic mistake of conducting an abstract discussion in verse. The very merits of the work considered as an argument,--its clearness, fullness, and consecutiveness,--detract from the pleasure which a work of art naturally produces. But the style cannot be too highly praised for its logical coherence and lucid ill.u.s.tration. The meaning of Lucretius can never be mistaken from any ambiguity in his language. There are difficulties arising from the uncertainty of the text, difficulties also from our unfamiliarity with his method and principles, or with the objects he describes, but none from confusion in his ideas or his reasoning, or from a vague or unreal use of words.

II.--THE SPECULATIVE IDEAS IN LUCRETIUS.

But it is in his grasp of speculative ideas, and in his application of them to interpret the living world, that the greatness of Lucretius as an imaginative thinker is most apparent. The substantial truth of all the ancient philosophies lay in the ideas which they attempted to express and embody, not in the symbols by which these ideas were successively represented. Lucretius has a place among the few adventurous thinkers of antiquity who attained to high eminences of contemplation, which were hidden from the ma.s.s of their contemporaries, and which, in the breadth of view afforded by them, are not far below the higher levels of our modern conceptions of Nature and human life. And there came to him, as to the earlier race of thinkers, that which comes so rarely to modern enquiry, the fresh and poetical sense of surprise and keen curiosity, as at the first discovery of a new country, or the first unfolding of some illimitable prospect.

(1) In the philosophy of Lucretius the world is conceived as absolutely under the government of law. The starting-point of his system--

Nullam rem e nilo gigni divinitus unquam,

is an inference from the recognition of this condition. There is no need to prove its truth: it is openly revealed in all the processes of Nature. This fact of universal order is indeed supposed to result from the eternal and immutable properties of the atoms and from the original limitation in their varieties: but the idea of law is prior to, and the condition of, all the principles enunciated in the first two books, in regard to the nature and properties of matter. In no ancient writer do we find the certainty and universality of law more emphatically and unmistakably expressed than in Lucretius. This is the final appeal in all controversy. The superiority of Epicurus is proclaimed on the ground of his having discovered the fixed and certain limitations of all existence--

Unde refert n.o.bis victor quid possit oriri, Quid nequeat, finita potestas denique cuique Quanam sit ratione atque alte terminus haerens[42].

Following on his steps the poet himself professes to teach--

Quo quaeque creata Foedere sint, in eo quam sit durare necessum, Nec validas valeant aevi rescindere leges[43].