On the Nature of the Universe (Oxford World’s Classics) (19 page)

We may rightly think are made from different elements.

Do not imagine that atoms of every kind

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Can be linked in every sort of combination.

If that were so, then monsters everywhere

You’ld see, things springing up half-man, half-beast,

Tall branches sprouting from a living body,

Limbs of land animals joined with those of sea.

Chimaeras breathing flame from hideous mouths

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Nature would feed throughout the fertile earth,

Too fertile, generating everything.

That these things do not happen is manifest.

We see all things created from fixed seeds

By a fixed parent and able as they grow

To keep true to the stock from which they sprang.

All this, for sure, fixed laws of nature govern.

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Each thing contains its own specific atoms

Which, fed by all its food, spread through the body

Into the limbs and there, combined together,

Produce appropriate movements. By contrast

Alien elements are thrown back by nature

Into the earth; and under the impact of blows

Invisible particles fly off from the body

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In quantity, unable anywhere

To combine with it, or feel the vital motions

That are in the body so as to copy them.

However, you must not think these laws apply

Only to animals. The same principle

Determines everything that is in the world.

All things created differ from each other

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By their whole natures; each one therefore must

Consist of atoms differently shaped.

Not that there are not many atoms endowed

With the same shape, but as a general rule

Things do not consist wholly of the same atoms.

Further, since the seeds are different, different also

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Must be their intervals, paths, weights, and impacts,

Connections, meetings, motions. These separate

Not only animals, but land from sea,

And hold the expanse of heaven apart from earth.

Now here’s a matter which with labour sweet

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I have researched. When you see before your eyes

A white thing shining bright, do not suppose

That it is made of white atoms; nor when you see something black

That it is made of black atoms; or that anything

Imbued with colour has it for the reason

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That its atoms are dyed with corresponding colour.

The atoms of matter are wholly without colour,

Not of the same colour as things, nor of different colour.

And if you think the mind cannot comprehend

Bodies of this kind, you wander far astray.

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Men blind from birth, who have never seen the light of sun,

Nevertheless can recognize by touch

Things that from birth they have not linked with colour.

In the same way bodies not marked by any hue

Are able to form a concept in the mind.

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We ourselves, when we touch a thing in the dark,

Do not feel that it possesses any colour.

Since I have proved this, now I will show there are

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Any colour can change completely into another,

Which primal atoms never ought to do.

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For something must survive unchangeable

Lest all things utterly return to nothing.

For all things have their own fixed boundaries;

Transgress them, and death follows instantly.

Therefore beware of staining atoms with colour

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Lest you find all things utterly return to nothing.

If atoms are by nature colourless

But possess different shapes from which they make

Colours of every kind in varied hues—

A process in which it is of great importance

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How they combine, what positions they take up,

What motions mutually they give and take—

That gives you at once a simple explanation

Why things that were black a little while before

Can suddenly become as white as marble,

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As the sea when strong winds beat upon its surface

Turns into white wave-crests of marble lustre.

You could say that often what we see as black,

When its matter has been mixed and the arrangement

Of atoms changed, some added, some taken away,

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Immediately is seen as white and shining.

But if the atoms of the sea’s wide levels

Were blue, they could not possibly be whitened.

Stir up blue matter anyway you will,

It can never change its colour into marble.

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Or if the different atoms that compose

The single unmixed brightness of the sea

Are dyed with different colours, as a square,

A single shape, may be made up of parts

Of different shape and form, it would be right

That, as in the square we see the different shapes,

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So on the surface of the sea, or in

The unmixed brightness of some other object,

We should see various colours, widely different.

Besides, the different shapes of various parts

Do not prevent the whole from being a square;

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But different colours make it impossible

For a thing to possess one single brightness.

The argument that sometimes entices us

To attribute colours to atoms, falls apart;

For white things are not made from white, nor black

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From black, but both from different colours.

White obviously comes much more easily

From no colour than from black, or any other

Colour that interferes with it and thwarts it.

And since there can be no colour without light

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And atoms do not emerge into the light,

You can be certain that no colour clothes them.

What colour can there be in total darkness?

It is light itself that produces change of colour

As things are lit by rays direct or slanting.

The feathers of a pigeon in the sunshine

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Around its neck, crowning its lovely head,

Sometimes you see them gleaming bronze and ruby,

At other times, viewed from a certain angle,

They mix sky blue with green of emeralds.

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A peacock’s tail, when filled with bounteous light,

In the same way changes colour as it turns.

These colours are made by incidence of light;

Without it certainly no colour could exist.

When the eye is said to see the colour white,

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The pupil receives a certain kind of impact,

And another when it sees black and all the rest;

But when you touch things, it matters not at all

What colour they have but only what the shape is.

For sure then, atoms have no need of colour,

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But their different shapes and forms produce

Various sensations of touch and different feelings.

There is no direct connection between colour and shape,

And all formations of atoms can exist in every hue;

Why therefore are things composed of them,

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Not tinted all with every kind of colour?

You would see ravens flying through the air

Emit a snowy sheen from snowy wings,

And swans turn black, their atoms being black,

Or any colour uniform or mixed.

Again, the more a thing is divided up

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Into minute parts, the more you see the colour

Fades gradually away and is extinguished.

When purple cloth for instance is pulled to pieces

Thread by thread, the purple and the scarlet,

Brightest of colours, are totally destroyed.

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So that you may see that, before its particles

Are reduced to atoms, they breathe out all their colour.

Finally, since you accept that certain things

Emit neither noise nor smell, for this reason

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You do not attribute sound or scent to everything.

So, since our eyes cannot see everything,

You may be sure that certain things exist

Which have no colour, any more than scent or sound.

And these the intelligent mind can comprehend

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No less than things that lack some other quality.

Do not suppose that atoms are bereft

Only of colour. They are quite devoid

Also of warmth and cold and fiery heat.