TRANSLATOR'S INTRODUCTION Ixi 



sympathy with the Epicurean physics to Lucretius, 

 who was his favourite classical poet, and whom he 

 had studied so carefully in his student days that he 

 could repeat long passages of his magnificent 

 poem ever afterwards. The splendid imagery and 

 the solemn grandeur of the Lucretian Cosmogony 

 fascinated him, and we find them reflected in his 

 own graphic and impressive prose. Even the details 

 in the Lucretian view of the formation of the world 

 reappear to some extent in Kant, but now divested 

 of their mythic accompaniments and elucidated 

 with all the logic and observation of the new 

 Natural Philosophy. Thus, the exiguum clinamen 

 the slight inclination or deviation of the atoms or 

 particles from the parallel in their fall through 

 infinite space which Lucretius, following Epicurus, 

 had introduced into the system to account for the 

 rise of human liberty out of the mechanical necessity 

 of Nature, * is also introduced by Kant into his 



1 Sed ne mens ipsa necessum, 

 Intestinum habeat cunctis in rebus agendis, 

 Et devicta quasi hoc cogatur ferre patique, 

 Id facit eociguum clinamen principiorum, 

 Nee ratione loci certa, nee tern pore certo . . . 

 Denique si semper motus connectitur omnis, 

 Et vetere exoritur semper novus ordine certo, 

 Nee declinando faciunt primordia motus 

 Principium quoddam, quod fati fbedera rumpat ; 

 Ex infinite ne causam causa sequatur ; 

 Libera per terras unde haec animantibus extat, 

 Unde est hsec, inquam, fatis avolsa potestas? 

 Per quam progredimur quo ducit quemque voluntas. 



De rerum natura> Lib. II., 283; 251. 



