the whole
poem; or dropping the phraseology of atoms, void, motion, chance, he
spoke at times of Nature as endowed with reason and a will (v. 186,
811, 846).

It would be beyond the scope of this essay to discuss the particular
form given by Lucretius to the Democritean philosophy. He believed
the universe to be composed of atoms, infinite in number, and
variable, to a finite extent, in form, which drift slantingly
through an infinite void. Their combinations under the conditions of
what we call space and time are transitory, while they remain
themselves imperishable. Consequently, as the soul itself is
corporeally constituted, and as thought and sensation depend on mere
material idola, men may divest themselves of any fear of the
hereafter. There is no such thing as providence, nor do the gods
concern themselves with the kaleidoscopic medley of atoms in
transient combination which we call our world. The latter were
points of supreme interest to Lucretius. He seems to have cared for
the cosmology of Epicurus chiefly as it touched humanity through
ethics and religion. To impartial observers, the identity or the
divergence of the forms assumed by scientific hypothesis at
different periods of the world's history is not a matter of much
importance. Yet a peculiar interest has of late been given to the
Lucretian materialism by the fact that physical speculation has
returned to what is substantially the same ground. The most modern
theories of evolution and of molecular structure may be stated in
language which, allowing for the progress made by exact thought
during the last twenty centuries, is singularly like that of
Lucretius. The Roman poet knew fewer facts than are familiar to our
men of science, and was far less able to analyse one puzzle into a
whole group of unexplained phenomena. He had besides but a feeble
grasp upon those discoveries which subserve the arts of life and
practical utility. But as regards _absolute knowledge_--knowledge,
that is to say, of what the universe really is, and of how it became
what it seems to us to be--Lucretius stood at the same point of
ignorance as we, after the labours of Darwin and of Spencer, of
Helmholtz and of Huxley, still do. Ontological speculation is as
barren now as then, and the problems of existence still remain
insoluble. The chief difference indeed between him and modern
investigators is that they have been lessoned by the experience of
the last two thousand years to k