Sensation and Sex by Lucretius

Author:Lucretius
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780141965352
Publisher: Penguin Books Ltd
Published: 2010-06-14T16:00:00+00:00

Let me now explain in my verses how speedily the films move and what power they possess of swimming swiftly through the air, so that a brief hour is spent on a long journey, whatever course each one may pursue in response to its particular impulse. My account will be persuasive rather than exhaustive. Better the fleeting melody of the swan than the long-drawn clangour of cranes high up among the northward-racing clouds.

First then, it is a common observation that light objects and those composed of small particles are swift-moving. A notable example is the light and heat of the sun: these are composed of minute atoms which, when they are shoved off, lose no time in shooting right across the interspace of air in the direction imparted by the shove. The supply of light is promptly renewed by fresh light, and one flash is set going by another in a continuous procession. Similarly the films must be able to traverse an incalculable space in an instant of time, and that for two reasons. First, a very slight initial impetus far away to their rear sufficed to launch them and they continue on their course at a velocity proportionate to their lightness. Secondly, they are thrown off with such a loose-knit texture that they can readily penetrate any object and filter through the interspace of air.

Again certain particles thrown up to the surface from the inmost depths of objects, namely those that form the light and heat of the sun, are seen at the very instant of daybreak to drop and spray out across the whole space of the sky and fly over sea and lands and flood the firmament. What then of particles that are already lying right on the surface when they are thrown off and whose egress is not hampered by any obstacle? Surely they must go all the faster and the farther and traverse an extent of space many times as great in the time it takes for the sunlight to flash across the sky?

A further and especially convincing indication of the velocity of surface-films is this. Expose a smooth surface of water to the open sky when it is bright with stars: immediately the sparkling constellations of the firmament in all their unclouded splendour are reproduced in the water. Does not this indicate how instantaneous is the descent of the image from the border-land of ether to the borders of earth? Here then is proof upon proof that objects emit particles that strike upon the eyes and provoke sight.

From certain objects there also flows a perpetual stream of odour, as coolness flows from rivers, heat from the sun, and from the ocean waves a spray that eats away walls round the sea-shore. Sounds of every sort are surging incessantly through the air. When we walk by the seaside, a salty tang of brine enters our mouth; when we watch a draught of wormwood being mixed in our presence, a bitter effluence touches it. So from every object flows a stream of matter, spreading out in all directions.

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