ELISHA MITCHELL SCIENTIFIC SOCIETY. %3 
For with what slope 
They fall, Nature compels them to revert again. 
Peter Schlemih], the famous shadowless man of Chamisso 
would have been wondrously relieved if he could have 
read Lucretius and learned, 
The obsequious shadow that attends our steps, 
When walking in the sun seems of itseif 
To walk with us and every gesture mock 
Yet nothing is but space, deprived of light 
: Book IV p. 169, 
. 
If we accept Lucretius’ theory that ‘‘all sounds cor- 
poreal are,’’ then it is easy to account for prevalent 
sore throats: 
And voice escaping to the sphery air, 
Roughens the throat, abrades the passages, 
‘“Whence come our mental images’’ is surely a most 
important question to settle but one before which the 
boldest is apt to hesitate. | 
There is no such hesitancy about Lucretius, however. 
‘‘Innumerable idols float in space.’’ These are many sub- 
tleand of finer texture than the ‘‘attenuate thread of spid- 
er or the roof of filmy gold.’” ‘These 
Through rarer pores can penetrate. 
And sentient make the mind in inmost seats. 
Book IV p. 181 
Any one inclined toward materialism can read with in- 
terest the intense materialsm of this old Epicurean. His 
cosmogeny is brilliantly fanciful. As to the sun it is neither 
ereater nor less than it appears and this is true alsoof moon 
and stars. Whether thesun returis by a course beneath 
the earth or whether it is exhausted by its day’s course 
and its place is taken by a new one, formed by the col- 
lection of ‘‘dispersed seeds of heat’’ he does not venture 
to decide. Kclipses and the moon’s phases are also dis- 
cussed. The struggle for existence is pictured and 
something very similar to the doctrine of the survi- 
