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177
The Story of Alchemy and the Beginnings of Chemistry
·
M. M. Pattison Muir
12
[2]
The
quotations
from
Lucretius
are
taken
from
Munro's
translation
(4th
Edition,
1886).
All
knowledge,
said
Lucretius,
is
based
on
"the
aspect
and
the
law
of
nature."
True
knowledge
can
be
obtained
only
by
the
use
of
the
senses;
there
is
no
other
method.
"From
the
senses
first
has
proceeded
the
knowledge
of
the
true,
and
the
senses
cannot
be
refuted.
Shall
reason,
founded
on
false
sense,
be
able
to
contradict
[the
senses],
wholly
founded
as
it
is
on
the
senses?
And
if
they
are
not
true,
then
all
reason
as
well
is
rendered
false."
The
first
principle
in
nature
is
asserted
by
Lucretius
to
be
that
"Nothing
is
ever
gotten
out
of
nothing."
"A
thing
never
returns
to
nothing,
but
all
things
after
disruption
go
back
to
the
first
bodies
of
matter."
If
there
were
not
imperishable
seeds
of
things,
atoms,
"first-beginnings
of
solid
singleness,"
then,
Lucretius
urges,
"infinite
time
gone
by
and
lapse
of
days
must
have
eaten
up
all
things
that
are
of
mortal
body."
The
first-beginnings,
or
atoms,
of
things
were
thought
of
by
Lucretius
as
always
moving;
"there
is
no
lowest
point
in
the
sum
of
the
universe"
where
they
can
rest;
they
meet,
clash,
rebound,
or
sometimes
join
together
into
groups
of
atoms
which
move
about
as
wholes.
Change,
growth,
decay,
formation,
disruption--these
are
the
marks
of
all
things.
"The
war
of
first-beginnings
waged
from
eternity
is
carried
on
with
dubious
issue:
now
here,
now
there,
the
life-bringing
elements
of
things
get
the
mastery,
and
are
o'ermastered
in
turn;
with
the
funeral
wail
blends
the
cry
which
babies
raise
when
they
enter
the
borders
of
light;
and
no
night
ever
followed
day,
nor
morning
night,
that
heard
not,
mingling
with
the
sickly
infant's
cries,
the
attendants'
wailings
on
death
and
black
funeral."
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