is in more natural keeping, and of which it is a yet more special expression. Primarily, as has been said, Lucretius wrote as a man of science. To indoctrinate✓ men with science, with accurate science, was his main object. But it was not with science for its own sake. It was for the sake of the effect it was to have upon their lives, upon their hopes, their joys, their practical conduct, their happiness. What this effect was to be, he seems to think in a large measure self-evident. At any rate it did not need the same elaborate exposition as the reasoning which led up to it. But still at the same time he is perpetually referring to it, perpetually calling the attention of his readers to it; showing them that it—it alone-is, though not the main subject of his work, at any rate the main object of it. What is man? why is he here? what hope has he in this world? what are the sources of his joys and sorrows? how shall he choose the first of these, and avoid the latter? what things are here worth living. for? and, what worth is there in even the best of these? These are the ultimate questions that really concern men; and science has no general value, save as preparing our minds to meet them. And, as Lucretius views it, science gives us this preparation in one single way. Its work is to isolate life; to show us that life is self-centred, self-bounded, and, in so far as it is sufficient at all, self-sufficient. Till life is thus isolated, it is the earnest, the fierce belief of Lucretius, that we shall never have it at its best; it will be full of miseries and solicitudes which need not exist, but which we through our folly and headstrong ignorance create ourselves, for our own torment. What manner of possession he regarded life when thus isolated, what happiness or pleasure he thought it would be able to yield us, is a question of equal interest for us as the character of his physical science, and suggests an equally significant comparison with the thought of our own time. Much of his views upon this point his poetical treatment of his subject will enable us to gather, though he has not reduced these opinions to a formal system; and the fact that he was a poet, and looked at life with a great poet's vision, will give to these opinions a special value and meaning. In examining his work, then, though it is a work that no longer speaks directly to us, or can directly influence any of our ways of thinking, or impart to us any new fragment of knowledge, we shall be examining something that has more interest for us than belongs to a mere curious antiquity. We shall be examining a distant landmark, to which the atmosphere of our own day is giving a new distinctness, and which shows us how far in twenty centuries men's minds have travelled-travelled along two courses. One course is their explanation of life by natural or by supernatural theories; the other is their sentiments and their practical teaching with regard to life when explained. Thus, in attempting to understand the work or Lucretius, our task will be simplified by dividing it into two parts. Let us first, therefore, without reference to the literary form he gave it, try to understand accurately his scientific system, his methods of obser vation and reasoning, and the conclusions, general and particular, that he arrived at. We shall thus see what the main message was that he wished to deliver to the world. Let us then go on to examine the poem itself, and see how, as a poet, he handled so refractory a subject; and how, in proclaiming and illustrating its relations to human life, and to human passion, he made it lead up to and suggest poetry. We shall so be brought to understand what his teaching was, and what he himself seemed to feel were the results of it. Then we may be led on to dwell briefly on the chief points of difference between him and us, -though in making such a comparison we must each of us do much for ourselves. And further, we may consider briefly-though this is the matter that will have least interest for us-the 'Essay on the Nature of Things,' not as science, not as philosophy, but simply as a literary production, as a poem, as a work of art in language, that is distinguished as such by certain technical defects and excellences. What then we shall now begin with considering is the scientific system that Lucretius aims at expounding to us what it was, and how he came to master it. To understand this, however, it will be necessary to go a little farther back in history, and try to realise as best we may the nature of the scientific systems that had gone before it, and that it at once grew out of and superseded. CHAPTER II. THE DAWN OF PHYSICAL SCIENCE. "THE impregnable position of Science," says one of our latest and most celebrated scientific teachers, "may be stated in a few words. We claim and we shall wrest from theology the entire domain of cosmological theory." The earliest claim and the earliest aim of science was identical with this, its latest. The same words are true of it, in its birth and in its maturity. The birth of science, using the word in the sense now popularly and specially attached to it, is not an event so vague as one might expect to find it. It is an event which, so far as we know, we can give with accuracy both a date and place to. In the Greek city of Miletus, about six hundred years before Christ, there flourished a certain thoughtful man named Thales. He it was who, so far as we know, was the first man of science. He caught the first distinct glimmer of a scientific conception of things, and revealed as best he could this new light to others. This event was a momentous one. The details of it are far remote: we have but few and scanty records of it. But let us do our best to realise what its nature was. The race that Thales came of, and amongst whose ideas he was nurtured, was a race singularly keen, inquiring, intellectual, and imaginative. They felt, therefore, the wonder of the world, and the need for an explanation of it. But for a long time they were contented with a very simple answer. In one point, we must remember, they were very unlike ourselves. One of the ideas which weighs most heavily on the modern consciousness is the sense of our own separation from nature, often of our antagonism to it. But the Greeks, amongst whom natural science took its rise, were conscious of no such separation. They felt they were a part of nature, akin to it, in harmony with it. They were indeed themselves but one of nature's forces. Now, of many of nature's phenomena, they felt that they were themselves the causes and the controllers. But besides these, there were others which they could neither cause nor control. Here was their first problem: how should they explain these? The answer was obvious. These were the workings of beings like themselves, only indefinitely wiser and indefinitely more powerful. All the phenomena of nature they at once accounted for, so far as they realised that any account was required of them, by an anthropomorphic polytheism; or in other words, as Mr Matthew Arnold might express it, all that was done in the world, that was not done by ourselves, was done and conducted by a race of “magnified and non-natural men." As, however, this system of theology became more definite, and more burdened with detail, it began to |