Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 15.djvu/67

Rh LUCRETIUS tion and discovery of truth. His devotion to Epicurus seems at first sight more difficult to explain than his enthusiasm for Empedocles or Ennius. Probably he found in his calmness of temperament, in his natural or acquired indifference to all violent emotion, even in his want of imagination, a sense of rest and of exemption from the disturbing influences of life which the passionate heart of the poet denied himself ; while in his physical philosophy he found both an answer to the questions which perplexed him and an inexhaustible stimulus to his intel lectual curiosity. The combative energy, the sense of superiority, the spirit of satire, characteristic of him as a Roman, unite with his loyalty to Epicurus to render him not only polemical but intolerant and contemptuous in his tone toward the great antagonists of his system, the Stoics, whom, while constantly referring to them, lie does not condescend even to name. With his admiration of the genius of others he combines a strong sense of his own power. He is quite conscious of the great importance and of the difficulty of his task ; but he feels his own ability to cope with it. He has the keenest capacity for intel lectual pleasure, and speaks of the constant charm which he found both in the collection of his materials and in the exercise of his art. If his mind was overstrained by the incessant devotion to his task of which he speaks, he allows no expression of fatigue or discouragement to escape from him. The ardour of study, the delight in contemplative thought, the &quot;sweet love of the muses,&quot; the &quot;great hope of fame,&quot; all combined to bear him buoyantly through all the difficulties and fatigues of his long and lonely adventure. It is more difficult to infer the moral thin the intellectual characteristics of a great writer from the personal impress left by him on his work. Yet it is not too much to say that there is no work in any literature that produces a profounder impression of sincerity. No writer shows a juster scorn of all mere rhetoric and exaggeration. This is one of the main causes of the spell which the poem exercises over us. By no Stoic even could the doctrine of independence of the world, and of the superiority of simplicity over show and luxury, be more forcibly and consistently inculcated. No one shows truer courage, not marred by irreverence, in confronting the great problems of human destiny, or greater strength in triumphing over human weakness. No one shows a truer humanity and a more tender sympathy with natural sorrow. In reverence for the sanctities of human affection, Virgil alone is his equal, nor is it an unlikely surmise that it was to the power of this sentiment, and the influence which it had on his relation with others, that he owed the cognomen of &quot;Cirus&quot; 1 or the &quot;beloved.&quot; The peculiarity of the poem of Lucretius, that which makes it unique in literature, is that it is a reasoned system of philosophy, written in verse. The subject was chosen and the method of exposition adopted, not primarily with the idea of moving and satisfying the imagination, but of communicating truth. The prosaic title De lierum Natura, a translation of the Greek Trept &amp;lt;/&amp;gt;u o-ea&amp;gt;s, implies the subordination of the artistic to a speculative motive. As in the case of nearly all the great works of Roman literary genius, the form of the poem was borrowed from the Greeks. The rise of speculative philosophy in Greece was coincident with the beginning of prose composition, and many of the earliest philosophers gave their thoughts to the world in the prose of the Ionic dialect ; others however, and especially the writers of the Greek colonies in Italy and Sicily, expounded their systems in continuous poems composed in the epic hexameter. These writers 1 Cf. Martha, LK Poeme de Litcrece, p. 28 flourished in the beginning and first half of the 5th ceutury B.C., the great awakening time of the intellectual, imaginative, and artistic faculties of the ancient world. The names most famous in connexion with this kind of poetry are those of Xenophanes and Parmenides, the Eleatics, and that of Empedocles of Agrigentum. The last was less important as a philosopher, but greater than the others both as a poet and a physicist. On both of these grounds he had a greater attraction to Lucretius. The fragments of the poem of Empedocles show that the Roman poet regarded that work as his model. In accord ance with this model he has given to his own poem the form of a personal address, lie has developed his argument systematically, and has applied the sustained impetus of epic poetry to the treatment of some of the driest and abstrusest topics. Many ideas and expressions of the Sicilian have been reproduced by the Roman poet ; aud the same tone of impassioned solemnity and melancholy seems to have pervaded both works. But Lucretius, if less original as a thinker, was probably a much greater poet than Empedocles. With the speculative enthusiasm of the Greeks he combines, in a remarkable measure, the Italian susceptibility to the charm of nature, and the greater humanity of feeling which belongs to a more advanced stage of human history. But what chiefly distinguishes him from his Greek prototypes is that his purpose is rather ethical than purely speculative. He shares with them the delight in inquiry and discovery ; but the zeal of a teacher and reformer is more strong in him than even the intel lectual passion of a thinker. His speculative ideas, his moral teaching, and his poetical power are indeed inter dependent on one another, and this interdependence is what mainly constitutes their power and interest. But of the three claims which he makes to immortality, &quot; Primum quod magnis docco de rebus, et artis Religionum animum nodis exsolvere pergo, Delude quod obscura de re tarn lucida paugo Carmina musieo contiugens cuncta leporc, &quot; 2 that which he himself regarded as supreme was the second, the claim of a liberator of the human spirit from the cramping bonds of superstition. This purpose is announced by him over and over again, as for instance at the beginning of the argument in the first, second, third, and sixth bocks. The main idea of the poem is the irreconcilable opposition between the truth of the laws of nature and the falsehood of the old superstitions. But it is not merely by the intellectual opposition between truth and falsehood that he is moved. The happiness and the dignity of life are regarded by him as absolutely dependent on the acceptance of the true and the rejection of the false doctrine. The ground of his extravagant eulogies of Epicurus is that he recognized in him the first great champion in the war of liberation, and in his system of philosophy he believed that he had found the weapons by which this war could be most effectually waged. Follow ing in his footsteps, he sets before himself the aim of finally crushing that fear of the gods and that fear of death resulting from it which he regards as the source of all the human ills. Incidentally he desires also to purify the heart from other violent passions which corrupt it and mar its peace. But the source even of these the passions of ambition and avarice he finds in the fear of death ; and that fear he resolves into the fear of eternal punishment after death. The selection of his subject and the order in which it is treated are determined by this motive. Although the title 2 &quot; First, Ly reason of the greatness of my argument, and my pur pose to set free the mind from the close drawn bonds of superstitions &amp;gt; next, because on so dark a theme I write such lucid verse, casting over all the charm of poesy. &quot;