Wherever nature gives them passageway?
Don't you see stars and meteors fall to earth?
Even the sun from heaven's height rains heat,
Sows fields with light. From heaven to earth descends 130
Downward the course of heat. Watch lightning flash
Across the countering winds; now here, now there,
Dart the cloud-riving fires; most often, though,
The bolts drive down to earth.
I'd have you know 135
That while these particles come mostly down, Straight down of their own weight through void, at times— No one knows when or where—they swerve a little, Not much, but just enough for us to say
They change direction. Were this not the case, 140
All things would fall straight down, like drops of rain, Through utter void, no birth-shock would emerge Out of collision, nothing be created.
If anyone thinks heavier bodies fall
More swiftly in their downward plunge, and thus 145
Fall on the lighter ones, and by this impact
Cause generation, he is very wrong.
To be sure, whatever falls through air or water
Goes faster in proportion to its weight,
For air's a frailer element than water. 150
Neither imposes quite the same delay
On all things passing through them, though both yield
More quickly to the heavier. But void
Can never hold up anything at all,
Never; its very essence is to yield. 155
So all things, though their weights may differ, drive
Through unresisting void at the same rate,
With the same speed. No heavier ones can catch
The lighter from above, nor downward strike
Such blows as might effect the variance 160
In motion nature gives to things. There must, I emphasize, there has to be, a swerve No more than minimal, for otherwise We'd seem to predicate a slanting motion,
But this the facts refute. It's obvious, 165
It's clear to see, that substances don't sidle,
Fall sidewise, hurtling downward; but whose eyes
Are quick enough to see they never veer
With almost infinitesimal deviation?
If cause forever follows after cause 170
In infinite, undeviating sequence
And a new motion always has to come
Out of an old one, by fixed law; if atoms
Do not, by swerving, cause new moves which break
The laws of fate; if cause forever follows, 175
In infinite sequence, cause—where would we get
This free will that we have, wrested from fate,
By which we go ahead, each one of us,
Wherever our pleasures urge? Don't we also swerve
At no fixed time or place, but as our purpose 180
Directs us? There's no doubt each man's will
Initiates action, and this prompting stirs
Our limbs to movement. When the gates fly open,
No racehorse breaks as quickly as he wants to,
For the whole body of matter must be aroused, 185
Inspired to follow what the mind desires;
So, you can see, motion begins with will
Of heart or mind, and from that will moves on
Through all the framework. This is not the same
As our advance when we are prodded on 190
Or shoved along by someone else's force.
Under those circumstances, it is clear
That all our substance moves against our will,
Violence-driven, till our purpose checks it.
A foreign force often propels men on, 195
Makes them go forward, hurries them pell-mell.
Yet you see, don't you, something in ourselves
Can offer this force resistance, fight against it,
And this resistance has sufficient power
To permeate the body, to check the course, 200
To bring it to a halt? In atoms also
There has to be some other cause for motion
Beyond extrinsic thrust or native weight,
And this third force is resident in us
Since we know nothing can be born of nothing. 205
It is weight that stops all things from being caused
By blows, by outer force. Well then (you ask)
What keeps the mind from having inside itself
Some such compulsiveness in all its doings,
What keeps it from being matter's absolute slave? 210
The answer is, that our free-will derives From just that ever-so-slight atomic swerve At no fixed time, at no fixed place whatever.
UNDERSTANDING THE TEXT
Which elements of Lucretius's theory of atoms correspond to scientific principles you have learned in school? Which elements do not?
Why does Lucretius talk about dust particles in the sunlight? What does he hope to illustrate with this example?
According to Lucretius, what causes people to see the world as the creation of divine beings? Does Lucretius dispute the existence of gods? If not, what roles does he assign to them?
The principal argument Lucretius makes against a god-created world is that "there are too many things the matter with it." What does he mean by this statement? Do you agree?
5. What causes atoms to swerve? What are the consequences of their swerving? What is the connection between atomic swerving and human free will?
MAKING CONNECTIONS
How does Lucretius's view of the role of divine beings in the world's affairs compare with William Paley's (p. 311)? Is there an element of the "watchmaker god" in De Rerum Natura?
Compare the statements that Lucretius makes about the interconnectedness of all things with those by Rachel Carson (p. 328) and Barry Commoner (p. 344) about ecology.
Lucretius is very careful to argue that the mechanical operation of the universe does not mean that all events are determined—there is, he claims, such a thing as free will. How does this view of free will compare with that of Ruth Benedict in Patterns of Culture (p. 112)?
WRITING ABOUT THE TEXT
Evaluate Lucretius's statement that "the nature of the world just could not be / A product of the gods' devising; no, There are too many things the matter with it." Do you agree, disagree, or agree and disagree with this statement? Use examples from this text and one or two others of your choice to support your argument.
Examine the notion of free will in Lucretius's poem. Explain how he sees free will and randomness emerging from purely mechanical operations and compare his view with that of William Paley (p. 311).
matsuo basho
The Narrow Road to the Interior
[1689]
JAPAN'S MOST FAMOUS and beloved poet Matsuo Basho(1644-1694) was born to parents likely to have been low-ranking members of the samurai, or the aristocratic class. The teenage Basho worked as a servant to a wealthy samurai named Todo Yoshitada, who was also a poet and encouraged Basho to study the classics. When Todo died unexpectedly in 1666, Basho renounced the samurai life and dedicated himself to poetry.
Basho soon became well known throughout Japan for his simple, direct use of haiku, the seventeen-syllable verse form that characterized Japanese poetry in this period. A passionate student of Chinese poetry, Basho incorporated the ideas and styles of the major Tang Dynasty poets—Li Po, Tu Fu, and Po Chu-i—with whom he was intimately familiar. He eventually ended up in the capital city of Edo (present-day Tokyo) where he became a full-time teacher of poetry and an acknowledged haiku master.
In the spring of 1689, Basho took one of the most famous walking tours in all of human history. At a time when very few people travelled the roads alone for fear of bandits and wild beasts, he and a companion left from the safety of Edo and walked more than 1,700 miles around the Japanese mainland, visiting the sites that earlier poets had described and writing poetry at every stop. When Basho returned, he published Oku no Hosomichi, or The Narrow Road to the Interior—a combination of prose and haiku poetry that has become one of the most important classics of Japanese literature.
The following excerpts from The Narrow Road to the Interior showcase Basho's effortless blend of evocative prose and sparse haiku verse. Unlike Western poetry, which frequently employs symbolism and metaphors, Basho's verses are short and concrete, almost never using these rhetorical devices. Basho is said to have taught his students that the greatness of a poem lay in its ordinariness—its ability to reproduce the most important elements of a common experience or feeling using only a few uncomplicated words. It is in this sense, and perhaps no other, that we can call The Narrow Road to the Interior an "ordinary" book.