194 GREEK PHILOSOPHY. 



This is thought to be in strict analogy with what happens to palpable 

 bodies ; and atoxns, having weight like them, are assumed to follow 

 the same law. 



or up and Epicurus has been accused of absurdity in speaking of a downwards 

 fiStl? the an d an upwards in relation to infinite space. But from his point 

 of view there is no absurdity. To him the earth was a fixed plain ; 

 and all motions of falling bodies, on whatever parts of the earth's 

 surface and at whatever times, were parallel to one another, and there- 

 fore in one uniform fixed direction, which men knew by the name of 

 " downwards." 1 



No centre. He rejects, for many, to him, strong reasons, the notion of a centre 

 towards which all things are in motion ; a notion entertained by those 

 philosophers who held that there is onl^ .one, and that a finite, world. 

 This would have been contrary to tb^ canon ; for such convergent 

 motions are nowhere observable: drops of rain, for instance, fall 

 parallel so at least thought Epicurus. 



DO atoms Suppose then the atoms moving like drops of rain across the va- 

 another? 0ne cunm > ^ ow are tnev ever to come together to form the world? Are 

 we to assume that they have different velocities, and that one atom 

 overtakes another? Epicurus had observed with sufficient accuracy the 

 motions of bodies in free space, not to admit that supposition ; and 

 argues acutely enough against the idea that heavy bodies move faster 

 than light ones. 



They meet At this rate atoms could never have combined. It only remained 

 frontthe Cti n tnen to suppose that some of them deviated from the straight line. 



straight line. This, too, regard intent ; that primal seeds 



When down direct their potent path they urge, 

 In time uncertain, and uncertain space, 

 Oft from the right decline. 2 

 According to Cicero, 3 " this supposition is mere puerility; for he 



1 The translator of Lucretius, in Bohn's Classical Library, after noticing this 

 assumed absurdity (page xiii), accuses his author of afterwards contradicting him- 

 self, when he says that nil est funditus imum. There is, however, no more contra- 

 diction in the one case than there is absurdity in the other. Lucretius holds, 

 following Epicurus, that there is an up and a down, but denies that there is an 

 upmost or a downmos ; there is a downwards, but no bottom. 



The translator of Diogenes Laertius, from the same misapprehension of this part 

 of the Epicurean, physics, makes Epicurus actually contradict himself: "Moreover, 

 we must not say (while speaking of the infinite) that such a point is the highest 

 point of it, or the lowest. For height and lovcness must not be predicated of the 

 infinite." The sentence in italics is in direct contradiction of what Epicurus says 

 immediately after. But the sentence in question has nothing corresponding to it in 

 the original ; it is a gloss of the translator, thinking to explain the preceding posi- 

 tion. Epicurus again and again asserts that the motion caused by weight is always 

 from high to low ; he only cautions against thinking of any points in these two 

 opposites as the highest or the lowest. 



2 Illud in his quoque te rebus cognoscere avemus, 

 Corpora cura deorsum rectum per inane feruntur, 

 Ponderibus propriis incerto tempore ferme 

 Incertisque loci spatiis decellere paulum. Lucr. ii. 216. 



3 Quse res tota ficta est pueriliter ; nam et ipsa declinatio ad libidinem fipgitur 



