LUCRETIUS AND HAECKEL 219 



quite agree. An English writer has pointed out that Lucretius, having 

 escaped from the arbitrary dominion of the gods and found himself con- 

 fronted by the yet more terrible phantasm of necessity transforming man 

 into a slave, a mere machine of fate, resorted to a bold and simple expe- 

 dient: "I cannot account for the free-will appearing in human beings 

 unless it were there from the first. If men have free-will, then the atoms 

 from which they come must have free-will too, since nothing comes from 

 nothing." This embryonic free-will is seen in the swerving of the atoms. 

 After insisting on the" necessity of assuming that the atoms have power to 

 swerve the least tiny bit, nee plus quam minimum, he proceeds:^ "Again 

 if all motion is ever linked together and a new motion ever springs from 

 another in a fixed order and first beginnings do not by swerving make 

 some commencement of motion to break through the decrees of fate, that 

 cause follow not cause from everlasting, whence have all living creatures 

 here on earth, whence, I ask, has been wrested from the fates the power by 

 which we go forward whither the will leads each, by which likewise we 

 change the direction of our motions neither at a fixed time nor a fixed 

 place, but when and where the mind itself has prompted ? For beyond a 

 doubt in these things his own will makes for each a beginning and from 



this beginning motions are welled through the hmbs Wherefore in 



seeds [i. e., atoms] too you must admit the same, admit that besides blows 

 and weights there is another cause of motion, from which this power of free 

 action has been begotten in us, since we see that nothing can come from 

 nothing. For weight forbids that all things be done by blows, through, 

 as it were, an outward force ; but that the mind itself does not feel an in- 

 ternal necessity in all its actions and is not, as it were, overmastered and 

 compelled to bear and put up with this, is caused by a minute swerving of 

 first-beginnings at no fixed part of space and no fixed time."^ In this 

 connection Lucretius admits fully the power of heredity: "However 

 much teaching renders some equally refined, it yet leaves behind those 

 earhest traces of the nature of each mind;" but he insists on the power of 

 reason to modify the natural disposition. "Traces of the different 

 natures left behind, which reason is unable to expel from us, are so 

 exceedingly sHght that there is nothing to hinder us from living a life 



• De R. N., II, 243-250. » Ibid., H, 251-293. 



