on of human life, or any hereafter for man; the dominion over
all existence of purely material law,--this seems to us to destroy man's
dearest faith and hope. This is the teaching of Lucretius, yet on this
road he marches with a step so firm and buoyant, an eye so awake to all
beauty and grandeur, a spirit so elate, that as we read we catch the
energy and elation. The reading of the riddle is this: the religion
against which Lucretius made his attack was not the soaring idealism of
Plato, nor the inspiring and consolatory faith of Christianity, but an
outworn mythology in which this world was ruled by capricious and
unworthy despots, and the next world was gloomy with terrors and almost
unlighted by hopes. Such had become the popular mythology in its later
day, and as contrasted with this the view and temper of Lucretius are
rational and manly. His message went far beyond a negation; he announced
one of the greatest discoveries of the human spirit--the uniformity of
nature. Well might the genius of poetry and the vigor of manhood unite
to make the message impressive and splendid. Not caprice, but
order,--not conflict, but harmony,--not deified partialities and spites
and lusts, but exalted and unchanging law, rules the universe!

When Lucretius essayed to define in what this law consists, he fell
hopelessly short of the mark. In his revulsion from the chaos and
pettiness of man-like divinities, he fixed on material forces,--clearly
to be seen and permanent in their operation,--as the only and sufficient
cause and order. Those forces, by a brilliant guess, he resolved into an
interplay of atoms. From this basis he projected a physical theory,
which we know now was quite inadequate even for material phenomena, while
the application of it to human thought and will was hopelessly
insufficient. Viewed from this standpoint, the spectacle of human life
takes on a sadness which the poet's genius cannot dispel, and sometimes
intensifies. To man's inner world Lucretius has no serviceable key. But
he is to be judged not by what he missed but by what he gained. He above
all others stands as the discoverer of one of the few cardinal truths by
which to-day we interpret the universe,--the constancy of nature.

The genius of Lucretius did for the realm of thought what Roman
statesmanship did for the nations,--it brought peace and order among
warring elements, by the imposition of a rule which was often narrow and
harsh, bu