It's another reading from
my Great Books list. Hmm...this was a strange one. I had to look up
who this guys was and when he wrote it. He was a poet about 50 years
before Christ was born. The poem (wikipedia says it's a poem but it
didn't seem like it when I was reading it) is about how the world
works and denounces superstition and gods. I liked reading it because
I didn't realize that the idea of atoms was so old. Also, there was a
good bit about the circle of life, you know, rain grows crops that
get eaten by animals, we eat the animals, die, fertilize the ground,
water evaporates, etc.
I'm sitting here trying to think of
something write about this book that might sound intelligent, but I'm
getting no where. Most of these books make me feel like this, but
eventually I find something to hook this information on and it all
comes together in the end. Sometimes when I read I feel like I'm
running out of time. I don't spend enough time studying. I need more
time!
Here are some good quotes from the
book.
From Book 1, “for if men saw that
there was a fixed limit to their woes, they would be able in some way
to withstand the religious scruples and threatening of the seers.”
To me this means that it's hard to
resist religious leaders and their ideas about the afterlife because
we cannot know what lies after death for sure. I know what I believe.
I know what I feel about God and Heaven, but I cannot be imperially
sure about it because no human has ever come back to tell us what's
over there. So when some strong persuasive person comes along and
tells us that if we don't do X, Y, and Z we will burn in hell, it's
hard not to be fearful.
Also from Book 1, “For fools admire
and like all things the more which they perceive to be concealed
under involved language, and determine things to be true which can
prettily tickle the ears and are varnished over with finely sounding
phrase.”
That's a classic, huh?!
One last one from Book 1, “Nay you
see throughout even in these verses of ours many elements common to
many words, though you must needs admit that the lines and words
differ one from the other both in meaning and in sound wherewith they
sound. So much can elements effect by a mere change of order; but
those elements which are the first-beginnings of things can bring
with them more combinations out of which different things can
severally be produced.”
Elements! There are a fixed number of
elements like letters of the alphabet, that make up things in our
world. Different combinations of the same elements make of different
things. That's what I didn't realize was so old. Pretty crazy to
think these guys pretty much already grasped the idea of elements
making up the world over 2000 years ago.
This one is from Book 2, “So far as
it goes, a small thing may give illustration of great things and put
you on the track of knowledge.”
This is what I'm hoping is going to
happen for me as I read these books!
In Book 3, he talks about the soul.
This guy is a humanist. He does not believe that the soul is immortal
or created by any being. I did have a problem with his explanations
here because he says everything needs a “seed” or starts
somewhere and that nothing is just created out of thin air, but who
created the seed? This is a problem I have had with the theory of
evolution before. What started it? Where did it come from? Some say
aliens. Then who created them?
While reading this book I had a
thought. To me, it seems that the soul uses the body to communicate
with this world. When the body is sick or weak or dies, it loses that
connection. A newborn baby has a full and complete soul straight from
God, but is just learning to use that body to communicate.
There are two more books in this “poem”
but they are listed later in the reading list. I'm sure I'll be able
to understand more when I get to them!
