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           Yet he and those forementioned (known to be

           So far beneath him, less than he in all),

           Though, as discoverers of much goodly truth,

           They gave, as 'twere from out of the heart's own shrine,

           Responses holier and soundlier based

           Than ever the Pythia pronounced for men

           From out the triped and the Delphian laurel,

           Have still in matter of first-elements

           Made ruin of themselves, and, great men, great

           Indeed and heavy there for them the fall:

           First, because, banishing the void from things,

           They yet assign them motion, and allow

           Things soft and loosely textured to exist,

           As air, dew, fire, earth, animals, and grains,

           Without admixture of void amid their frame.

           Next, because, thinking there can be no end

           In cutting bodies down to less and less

           Nor pause established to their breaking up,

           They hold there is no minimum in things;

           Albeit we see the boundary point of aught

           Is that which to our senses seems its least,

           Whereby thou mayst conjecture, that, because

           The things thou canst not mark have boundary points,

           They surely have their minimums. Then, too,

           Since these philosophers ascribe to things

           Soft primal germs, which we behold to be

           Of birth and body mortal, thus, throughout,

           The sum of things must be returned to naught,

           And, born from naught, abundance thrive anew—

           Thou seest how far each doctrine stands from truth.

           And, next, these bodies are among themselves

           In many ways poisons and foes to each,

           Wherefore their congress will destroy them quite

           Or drive asunder as we see in storms

           Rains, winds, and lightnings all asunder fly.

           Thus too, if all things are create of four,

           And all again dissolved into the four,

           How can the four be called the primal germs

           Of things, more than all things themselves be thought,

           By retroversion, primal germs of them?

           For ever alternately are both begot,

           With interchange of nature and aspect

           From immemorial time. But if percase

           Thou think'st the frame of fire and earth, the air,

           The dew of water can in such wise meet

           As not by mingling to resign their nature,

           From them for thee no world can be create—

           No thing of breath, no stock or stalk of tree:

           In the wild congress of this varied heap

           Each thing its proper nature will display,

           And air will palpably be seen mixed up

           With earth together, unquenched heat with water.

           But primal germs in bringing things to birth

           Must have a latent, unseen quality,

           Lest some outstanding alien element

           Confuse and minish in the thing create

           Its proper being.

                              But these men begin

           From heaven, and from its fires; and first they feign

           That fire will turn into the winds of air,

           Next, that from air the rain begotten is,

           And earth created out of rain, and then

           That all, reversely, are returned from earth—

           The moisture first, then air thereafter heat—

           And that these same ne'er cease in interchange,

           To go their ways from heaven to earth, from earth

           Unto the stars of the aethereal world—

           Which in no wise at all the germs can do.

           Since an immutable somewhat still must be,

           Lest all things utterly be sped to naught;

           For change in anything from out its bounds

           Means instant death of that which was before.

           Wherefore, since those things, mentioned heretofore,

           Suffer a changed state, they must derive

           From others ever unconvertible,

           Lest an things utterly return to naught.

           Then why not rather presuppose there be

           Bodies with such a nature furnished forth

           That, if perchance they have created fire,

           Can still (by virtue of a few withdrawn,

           Or added few, and motion and order changed)

           Fashion the winds of air, and thus all things

           Forevermore be interchanged with all?

           "But facts in proof are manifest," thou sayest,

           "That all things grow into the winds of air

           And forth from earth are nourished, and unless

           The season favour at propitious hour

           With rains enough to set the trees a-reel

           Under the soak of bulking thunderheads,

           And sun, for its share, foster and give heat,

           No grains, nor trees, nor breathing things