64 JOURNAL OF THE 
heart. i . ‘ He unites the specu- 
lative passion of the dawn of ancient inquiry with the 
real observation of its meridian; and he has brought the 
imaginative conception of nature that gave birth to the 
earliest philosophy into harmony with the Italian love of 
the living beauty of the world.” 
This poem is, as Constant Martha calls it, the most an- 
cient monument of the science of Rome. 
Lucretius had the difficult task of transcribing the 
concise, dry philosophy of Epicurus into the language of 
a people who knew little of science and cared less for it, 
except in the form of some useful application, and it re- 
quired great ingenuity to succeed in conveying the desired 
ideas in a language so deficient in the needed terms. 
There is perhaps no great originality shown by Lucretius 
in the subject-matter of the poem but his enthusiasm and 
intense admiration for his master made him throw his 
whole poetic spirit into the task and so to give life and 
vivacity to the dry bones of the system. With a truly 
Roman simplicity,as Martha says, he believed that he 
and his master had said the last word of science, He was 
confident that his theories had solved all the mysteries of 
the universe, many of which were after all but the crea- 
tions of superstition and trembling ignorance. A similar 
statement is made triumphantly nearly twenty centuries 
later by Berthelot. In the preface to his des Orig- 
ines de l’ Alchimie he too maintains thatscience has done 
away with mystery. ‘‘Ze monde est aujourd’ hui sans 
mystere.’’ Wesmile at the solutions which Epicurus, 
through his devoted follower, offered of the phenom- 
ena of nature. Whocan feel assured that some future 
ceneration shall not smile, with the same pitying superi- 
ority, over the iguorance and folly of Berthelot. 
‘‘But the old problems that have defied the thought of 
the ages still wait for a solution. When men inquire for 
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