24 SCIENCE AND IMMORTALITY 



— " Nam certe non inter se stipata cohaeret materies " 

 — but discrete and in constant movement. Even in 

 iron and stone, and such hard substances, his eye 

 could see the atoms throb and seethe. Surely such 

 scientific imagination and such prescience were most 

 remarkable ! More remarkable still, Lucretius 

 actually anticipated the modern scientific and philo- 

 sophic theory which reduces all material phenomena 

 to motion, or to mass and motion. "It matters 

 much," he insists, " with what others and in what 

 position the same atoms are severally held in union, 

 and what motion they mutually give and receive." 



The objection that matter seems stationary is seen 

 by Lucretius to have no great weight. " One 

 thing," he says, " you need not marvel at : why, 

 seeing that the first beginnings of things (atoms) 

 are all in motion, still the sun appears to stand in 

 perfect rest " ; and he points out that experience 

 is full of similar contradictions : that a flock of 

 sheep playing about on a distant slope appears to 

 be "a white spot standing on a green hill," and 

 that a gleaming army seen afar may seem only a 

 bright patch. 



His theory of chemical combination was also 

 sound. " There are certain bodies {i.e. atoms) 

 possessed of such a nature that if they have haply 

 produced fire, the same may, after a few have 

 been taken away and a few added on, and their 



