450 FRAGMENTS OF SCIENCE. 
system of things has been evolved. " If you will apprehend 
and keep in mind these things, Nature, free at once, and 
rid of her haughty lords, is seen to do all things sponta- 
neously of herself, without the meddling of the gods/'* 
To meet the objection that his atoms cannot be seen, 
Lucretius describes a violent storm, and shows that the 
invisible particles of air act in the same way as the visible 
particles of water. We perceive, moreover, the different 
smells of things, yet never see them coming to our nostrils. 
Again, clothes hung up on a shore which waves break upon, 
become moist, and then get dry if spread out in the sun, 
though no eye can see either the approach or the escape of 
the water-particles. A ring, worn long on the finger, 
becomes thinner; a water-drop hollows out a stone; the 
plowshare is rubbed away in the field; the street-pavement 
is worn bv the feet; but the particles that disappear at any 
moment we cannot see. Nature acts though invisible par- 
ticles. That Lucretius had a strong scientific imagination 
the foregoing references prove. A fine illustration of his 
power in this respect, is his explanation of the apparent 
rest of bodies whose atoms are in motion. He employs the 
image of a flock of sheep with skipping lambs, which, seen 
from a distance, presents simply a. white patch upon the 
green hill, the jumping of the individual lambs being 
quite invisible. 
His vaguely grand conception of the atoms falling 
eternally through space suggested the nebular hypothesis 
to Kant, its first propounder. Far beyond the limits of 
our visible world -are to be found atoms innumerable, 
which have never been united to form bodies, or which, if 
once united, have been again dispersed falling silently 
through immeasurable intervals of time and space. As 
everywhere throughout the All the same conditions are 
repeated, so must the phenomena be repeated also. Above 
us, below us, beside us, therefore, are worlds without end; 
and this, when considered, must dissipate every thought 
of a deflection of the universe by the gods. The worlds 
come and go, attracting new atoms out of limitless space, 
or dispersing their own particles. The reputed death of 
* Monro's translation. In his criticism of this work (Contemporary 
Review, 1867) Dr. Hay man does not appear to be aware of the really 
sound and subtile observations on which the reasoning of Lucretius, 
though erroneous, sometimes rests. 
