SOURCE: Bergson, Henri. “The Originality of Lucretius as a Philosopher.” In The Philosophy of Poetry: The Genius of Lucretius, edited and translated by Wade Baskin, pp. 65-83. Nedw York: Philosophical Library, 1959.

[In the following excerpt, originally written in 1884, Bergson contends that Lucretius's study and love of nature and its laws helped to make his writings more poetic than those of either Democritus or Epicurus.]

Epicurus borrowed most of his doctrine from the atomists and from the Cyrenaic school.

Atomism, one of the most profound philosophical systems developed in antiquity, was first expounded by Leucippus and his disciple, Democritus.¹ These philosophers held that the best explanation of the universe was the simplest one. It is obvious that countless tragedies and comedies have been created from the simple, invariable letters of the alphabet. In the same way, according to them, the numerous and varied phenomena in the universe, and the objects that seem to differ so greatly by virtue of their many shapes and colors, may well be reduced in the last analysis to very simple elements which are almost identical and which account for the wide variety of things through the infinite multiplicity of their combinations.

The simple elements which form material objects or bodies by combining, and which bring about transformations of matter by changing their places, are atoms.

Atoms are minute bodies so thin that they are invisible and so small that they are indivisible. In sufficient numbers they form a visible, tangible body. If we could carry the division of bodies far enough with the help of delicate instruments and, after breaking up a body, divide its parts and keep applying the process of division to the successive parts, we would finally obtain indivisible and even invisible elements, atoms.

Since the number of bodies is infinite, the number of atoms is also infinite. Atoms have existed since time began and are indestructible; they are eternal. Their only quality is form—not taste, smell, weight or resistance; they differ solely by virtue of their form. If we could see atoms, we would discover for ourselves that they have different forms. The number of possible forms is limited, but an infinite number of atoms can have the same form. Finally, atoms are changeless. Each of them is and will always be the same throughout eternity. An atom can not change; since it is indivisible, its parts can not be moved; nor can they change their quality, for they have none.

The bodies that we see daily are made up of atoms. They may seem to differ strikingly, but that is because their atoms do not always have the same form. Two Greek words selected at random yield different sounds; this is because their letters are different. Furthermore, even when the atoms that constitute two bodies are identical and the same in number, the bodies will differ in appearance if their atoms are arranged differently. The syllables an and na do not sound the same even though composed of the same elements, for the order of their elements is not the same. Finally, even when identical atoms are similarly arranged, the two bodies will appear to be different if the direction or orientation of their atoms is not the same. The letters n and z do not sound the same, yet both are articulated at the same point.

The result is that different bodies on striking our senses appear to have qualities of color, weight, sound, etc. but actually do not; these qualities are mere appearances or impressions made on our sense organs. When we banish these illusions and consider bodies not as they appear, but as they are, we find that they consist of atoms and that atoms have none of those attributes. Since atoms can assume diverse forms and can be arranged and oriented in different ways, we should expect bodies to make diverse impressions on our senses, depending on the shape, arrangement, and orientation of their atoms.

And if a particular body seems to change its appearance from time to time, this is because its atoms have changed their places or been increased or decreased in number. The sound and sense of a word are changed completely when a letter is added, deleted or shifted.

How have atoms shaped the world in which we live? They are imbued with a natural movement that carries them across the infinite void. As they move, they collide, smash into one another, pile up. Our world is such an agglomeration or pile of atoms. This accounts for the formation, in succession, of the earth—the flat, hollow cylinder that floats in the air—the moon (which is like the earth), the sun, the stars and, finally, living beings. Even the soul, which seems to animate organized bodies, is made up of atoms; but its atoms are mobile, round and smooth. Successive thoughts are nothing more than the atoms of which the mind is composed. The mind perceives material objects or collocations of objects around it by virtue of the fact that these objects are constantly emitting in all directions tiny images that strike the organs of the senses. In short, bodies and souls as well as objects and worlds are composed of atoms; natural phenomena and thinking are movements of atoms; there has never been and will never be anything other than atoms, void, and movement.

Such was Democritus' system, perhaps the most perfect expression of materialism.

Epicurus² was no scholar. He scorned the sciences in general, equated mathematics and falsehood, and showed contempt for rhetoric and letters. For him, the important thing was how to live happily. Therein lies the privilege of the sage, and the sole function of philosophy is to lead us to happiness by way of the shortest possible route. Only a little reflection will show that happiness consists of an inner peace, an unalterable serenity of mind. To know how to deal with the present and to guard against worry and fear—that is true wisdom and the ultimate aim of philosophy. Unfortunately, two concurrent forces constantly threaten our peace of mind. First, poor mortals imagine that good or malevolent gods watch over them, follow them about, spy on them and interfere at every turn. They look upon lighting as an omen or a punishment and tremble at the sound of thunder. They believe that supernatural forces are everywhere present; they imagine that they see them rise up before them from all sides, like the bogies that frighten children during the night. Then death itself appears to them, not as an agent of deliverance, but as the gateway to hell, the grim reaper, and every conceivable form of torture. The result of all this is that they devote their lives to fearing the gods and death; this dual superstition is a constant source of anxiety and crime; it poisons their lives and corrupts their happiness and their morality.

How can the soul recover the tranquility which it has lost? It must be shown that the gods take no part in the daily lives of men, and that death is the end of everything. Only through this knowledge will the soul regain possession of itself.

On considering the doctrines of his predecessors, Epicurus saw that atomism, better than any other system, could furnish the proof required by the soul. As Democritus showed, the universe is made up of atoms and combinations of atoms; all natural phenomena are explained by the movement and regrouping of atoms in accordance with mechanical laws, and it would be pointless for the gods to interfere. Men imagine mysterious and supernatural forces simply because they could not otherwise explain certain phenomena, especially those that appeal directly to the imagination, such as lightning. As soon as they are shown the natural chain of causes and effects, superstition will give way to understanding.

The fear of death will also be dispelled. For men believe in hell and demons because they think that the soul follows the body. But Democritus has shown that the soul, like everything else, is simply a combination of atoms. It therefore decays after death, just as the body and all other things decay. Thus we have nothing to fear since no part of us is left.

That is why Epicurus adopted the atomic theory. But he added to it and modified it. His additions and modifications stemmed both from his abysmal ignorance of scientific things and from the orignality of his approach. His aim was, in the last analysis, not to instruct men but to soothe them.

First, he reasoned that there must be a cause for the perpetual movement of atoms. He therefore posited a new quality, weight, and assumed that atoms are transported, by virtue of their weight, in the same direction and at the same speed across the infinite void.³ Movement is in a vertical direction; atoms travel downward. If he had had a more scientific mind, he might have tried to determine their source and goal;⁴ he might then have given consideration to Aristotle's assumption that weight results from the attraction of a center. But Epicurus could not be bothered with such trivialities; he was concerned mainly with the movement of atoms in the void; he felt that the layman, accustomed to seeing bodies fall, would think that he understood and be satisfied when told that atoms are heavy and that their weight carries them along.

But if by virtue of their weight they move in the same direction and at the same speed, how can they possibly collide, accumulate, and form bodies and worlds? We must admit, Epicurus answered, that there are scattered exceptions to the great law that governs the fall of atoms. Atoms may sometimes incline to the right or to the left and deviate slightly. This deviation, known as clinamen, obeys no law and is unpredictable; it is a capricious trait of atoms. It is difficult of course to visualize movement without cause, but when we realize that deviations are slight and the movements imperceptible, we are satisfied with our explanation and the minor concession has cost us nothing.

The formation of the world is easily explained. Atoms meet and collide; their collision makes the lighter ones rebound, and their upward movements combine with the downward movements to cause a rotary or spiraling movement. Atoms accumulate, and each cluster by virtue of its own movement becomes detached from the mass and constitutes a world. Because the number of atoms is infinite, there is an infinity of worlds, each differing profoundly from all the others. And since the movement of atoms is eternal, the formation of new worlds continues eternally.

The earth on which we live was formed relatively recently. First it engendered plants, then animals. There is really no reason for marveling over the arrangement of the different organs and attributing the creation of living beings to an intelligent cause, for everything can be explained by the laws of matter. It is perfectly obvious that atoms, which are constantly moving about, uniting and disuniting, will naturally yield every possible combination during the infinite course of the centuries. The marvelous combinations that we admire today and call living beings were destined to appear in the course of time; they did, and since others unfit to live and perpetuate themselves disappeared, we see only the best, most perfect combinations and admire the supposedly intelligent order of nature. Fate alone brought them into being just as it also engendered thousands of others.

That is exactly how the human species came to be. The first men were veritable beasts who lived as such until they gradually became civilized through the discovery or invention of fire, clothing, the arts, home life and social institutions. Furthermore, mankind is destined to perish, as are the world in which we live and all the worlds spawned by chance. As a result of the movement of atoms, everything will one day disintegrate; the atoms, converted into dust, will be drawn together again; new combinations of atoms will produce new worlds; and so it goes, throughout eternity.

The human soul, like other bodies, is composed of atoms and subject to their laws. Its atoms also move naturally and inevitably by virtue of their weight as well as individually by virtue of their clinamen. When they move by virtue of their weight, the soul is passive and surrenders to their inexorable laws. But when they avail themselves of their faculty for deviating slightly by inclining to the right or to the left, the soul is active and takes advantage of its freedom. Finally, the soul will perish forever when death decomposes the body and frees its atoms.

Epicurus thus dispelled the vain phantoms that make mankind tremble. Death is no evil, for we are completely destroyed; nor are the gods to be feared, for they are incapable of interfering in the affairs of the universe since everything can be explained without them. Still, we must accept the fact that the gods have a real existence since we think about them and since every thought in turn derives from an image and every image from a real object. But the gods do not meddle in our affairs; they have no desire to do so; they prefer to converse with each other in Greek; conversation is the sweetest of pleasures, and Greek is a divine language. Immobile, immortal and eternally happy, the gods dwell in the regions between the worlds, where nothing disturbs them.

Such was the system of the philosopher for whom Lucretius expressed great admiration. To Lucretius, Epicurus was more than a sage; he was the matchless sage and great benefactor of mankind. That is why Lucretius did not simply defer to him as a disciple to his master but rather worshiped and adored him as a god. Lucretius hesitates to speak after the sage has spoken (III, 6), for only a god could properly extol his vast, sublime discoveries (V, 1). If Athens had given the world nothing except Epicurus, she would have done enough for mankind (VI, 4).

At the beginning of almost every book, Lucretius inserts a pompous eulogy of Epicurus, and he does so without ever repeating himself. In Book I he lauds the courage and will power that Epicurus had to call upon to overcome superstition. Later, at the beginning of Book III, he praises the genius of the scientist who revealed the secrets of nature and of things. Finally, in Books V and VI, the poet stresses the superiority of Epicurean ethics. He explains that he owes his own new formulations to his master's influence and that because he has developed a cult around Epicurus, he is placing an invocation at the beginning of each book.

But even as he followed Epicurus closely and thought that he was translating him, Lucretius—perhaps unconsciously and certainly without wishing to do so—was singularly original. To see this we need only compare an extant portion of Epicurus' test with the lines used by Lucretius to translate and explain it. The comparison will show that through seemingly insignificant interpolations and stylistic devices, the poet gives a new turn to his master's thought, causing it to create a fresh impression on our minds. Let us consider briefly the scope of his contribution and the basis of his originality.

Epicurus apparently did not love nature. He did not study physical phenomena merely for the purpose of increasing his knowledge; he did not explain them to his disciples solely for the purpose of instructing them in the nature of things. Epicurus disdainfully rejected the notion of acquiring knowledge for its own sake or of learning something solely for future reference. He himself proposed three or four explanations for the same phenomenon. According to him, the whole purpose of knowledge is to banish gods from nature and combat superstition. Democritus' system appealed to him because it provided him with a vehicle for relating everything to mechanical and natural causes. Exactly what were these causes? The answer to him was unimportant, with the result that he gave puerile explanations for a great number of phenomena; the Epicurean doctrine, in fact, leads to futility in the study of any question not linked directly to everyday life and the pursuit of happiness.

But Lucretius was struck by the part of Democritus' theory treated lightly by Epicurus: the absolute rigidity of the laws of nature. Everything consists and has always consisted solely of atoms, masses of atoms, and changes in the arrangement of atoms; atoms move on, eternally and inexorably; definite, changeless laws must govern the birth, growth and decay of things caught up and squeezed from every direction by the tight bond of necessity. And inspired by what he assumes to be the basic idea of Epicureanism, Lucretius discovers that while natural phenomena appear to follow no set plan, their infinite variety actually masks the movement of atoms in predetermined directions and the uniform force of immutable laws.

Lucretius, unlike Epicurus, was an enthusiastic observer of nature; he shows a unique gift for grasping its picturesque side—its fleeting, transitional variations. He manages simultaneously to appreciate the pattern that appeals to the geometrician and the pattern that appeals to the artist. He is like a great artist who stands before a model, admires its beauty, understands it, and captures it admirably on his canvas, yet can not prevent himself from analyzing it and breaking it apart anatomically into fibers and cells.

His ability to grasp outright the two-sided character of things is the source of the incomparable originality of his poetry, his philosophy and, to sum up everything in one word, his genius. Had he been satisfied to depict nature from the outside, his description would in all probability have been cold and hackneyed. Had he done nothing more than develop his atomic theory in Latin verse, his poem might have been more insipid than the writings of a geometrician. But his description is not cold, for we realize from the very beginning that he does not describe for the sheer pleasure of description; constantly preoccupied by the theory of the atom, he describes in order to instruct, with the result that each of his descriptions is imbued with an oratorical fervor that stimulates and sways. And his poetry is not dull; it is as vivid as nature; the poet does not depict collections of atoms in their stark nakedness, as did Democritus; instead, he decks them out, impulsively and in spite of himself, in natural or in fancied colors.

We need no longer wonder why Lucretius was so enthusiastic about Epicurus' system. We can be sure that the poet would not have written De Rerum Natura if he had seen in Epicureanism nothing more than a dry, self-centered doctrine contrived for the purpose of bringing to man the calm placidity of the beast and ridding him of his most noble anxieties. But by accepting the ethical consequences of the Epicurean doctrine and putting a high price on them, Lucretius managed to relate them to a great poetic idea which, though new to the Romans, had been enunciated by Democritus and adopted by Epicurus: the eternal rigidity of the laws of nature. It is of course reasonable to argue that his theory of the atom is not conclusive, especially in its attempt to explain the soul and mental phenomena. But the indisputable fact is that the theory of atoms offers a poetic conception of the universe. Countless atoms that by virtue of immutable laws regularly move across boundless space, worlds that are constantly being shaped and destroyed, vast streams that are created by the calm and measured course of events determined by inexorable natural laws—all that is certainly enough to capture and enslave an imagination even less vivid than his. Nature takes on new majesty; no longer can any phenomenon be unworthy of description or any fact unimportant; all changes, great and small, have the same causes; the same forces are responsible for the rusting of iron and the decay of the universe; every description points up that same eternal truth.

Lucretius was able by adopting one of Democritus' ideas to give a new turn to Epicureanism. And his original conception of the nature of things brought him to an original conception of human nature.

Epicurus' doctrine, though not exactly mirthful, excluded melancholy, sadness, or anything else which might trouble the mind. When a man learns to rid himself of superstitions and childish fears, to renounce politics and even family life, and to banish his cares and quiet his passions, then his state of equilibrium leads to lasting happiness. His mind attains a placid state of joyfulness which, though not very intense, is permanent. The true Epicurean aspired to reach that state of quietude and undisturbed serenity. Against that, Lucretius drew a wholly different conclusion from the theory of the atom. Deeply impressed by the inexorability of natural laws, he felt compassion for mankind; for man must act and not achieve, struggle and not succeed, and be unwillingly drawn into the vortex of things by rigid natural laws. Why work or take pains to accomplish anything? Why struggle or complain? We are victims of a common law, and nature shows little concern over us. If a wind bearing noxious germs blows across the earth, an epidemic will break out, men will die, and the gods will be powerless to act. And the poem ends with a frightful description of the plague of Athens.

Lucretius tried to show the powerlessness of men and gods in the face of natural laws. He tried to paint an awesome picture, to fill our minds with dread, and to make this our last impression. He succeeded. His deep pity for suffering humanity evokes our sympathy and makes us love him. At the same time, it imbues his doctrine and his poem with priceless originality.

Notes

1. Democritus was born in Abdera c. 460 b.c. and died c. 370. He traveled in Egypt and Asia, then settled down in his native land, where his fellow citizens called him “the Abderite.” He wrote on all subjects—mathematics, physics, ethics, grammar, agriculture, etc. Only unimportant fragments of his writings are extant.

2. Epicurus was born in Gargettos, near Athens, c. 341 b.c. and died in 270. Shortly after he began his studies, he formulated a new doctrine which he taught first at Mytilene, then Lampsacus, and finally Athens. In Athens he bought a garden where his students gathered. It is said that they lived on unleavened bread and clear water. His works, three hundred according to Diogenes Laërtes, have been lost; Diogenes cited a few passages from them; fragments of his Treatise on Nature were found on parchment at Herculaneum.

3. A historian of philosophy, Zeller, states that Democritus had probably already attributed weight to atoms, but the writings of Aristotle (Metaphysics, I, 4), Plutarch, and Stobaeus contradict his statement. Even if he did attribute weight to atoms, Democritus did not posit it as the cause of their movement; credit for this goes to Epicurus.

4. It is true that Aristotle had also spoken of up and down as real things (Physics IV), but he had at least tried to adduce reasons.