On the Nature of Things
By Titus Lucretius Carus (translated by William Ellery Leonard)
Lucretius's Latin poem sets out the atomic philosophy of Epicurus, arguing that the world was made by no god, that the soul dies with the body, and that the fear of death and of the gods is groundless. William Ellery Leonard's blank-verse translation of 1916 gives each section a heading that states its argument.
Summary written with Claude Sonnet 5.5.
Table of contents
- 1: Substance Is Eternal
- 2: The Void
- 3: Character of the Atoms
- 4: Confutation of Other Philosophers
- 5: The Infinity of the Universe
- 6: Proem
- 7: Atomic Motions
- 8: Atomic Forms and Their Combinations
- 9: Absence of Secondary Qualities
- 10: Infinite Worlds
- 11: Proem
- 12: Nature and Composition of the Mind
- 13: The Soul Is Mortal
- 14: Folly of the Fear of Death
- 15: Proem
- 16: Existence and Character of the Images
- 17: The Senses and Mental Pictures
- 18: Some Vital Functions
- 19: The Passion of Love
- 20: Proem
- 21: The World Is Not Eternal
- 22: Origins of Vegetable and Animal Life
- 23: Origins and Savage Period of Mankind
- 24: Beginnings of Civilization
- 25: Proem
- 26: Great Meteorological Phenomena, Etc
- 27: The Plague Athens