46 1-14 to 1-15
a very little bit, indeed a minimal distance, and that in this way are
produced the mutual entanglements, linkages, and cohesions of the atoms
as a result of which the world and all the parts of the world and everything
in it are produced .... The swerve itself is made up to suit his pleasure-
for he says that the atom swerves without a cause ... -and without a
cause he tore from the atoms that straight downward motion which is
natural to all heavy objects (as he himself declared); and by so doing he
did not even achieve the goal he intended when he made up this fiction.
- For if all the atoms swerve, none will ever cohere in a compound;
but if some swerve and some move properly by their own impetus, this
will amount, first of all, to assigning different spheres of influence, so to
speak, to the atoms, some to move straight, others to move crookedly;
and second, that very same confused concourse of atoms (and this is the
point which Democritus too had trouble with) will not be able to produce
the orderly beauty of this world.
On Fate 18-48 (selections) [1-15]
- If it were stated thus, "Scipio will die by violence at night in his
room", that would be a true statement. For it would be a statement that
what was going to occur actually was going to occur; and one ought to
know that it was going to occur from the fact that it did happen. And
"Scipio will die" was no more true than "he will die in that manner",
nor was it any more necessary that he die than that he die in that manner;
nor was [the statement that] "Scipio was killed" any more immune from
a change from truth to falsehood than [the statement that] "Scipio will
be killed".
And the fact that these things are so does not mean that Epicurus has
any reason to fear fate and seek aid from the atoms by making them
swerve from their paths, and so at one time to burden himself with two
unsolvable difficulties: first, that something should occur without a cause,
which means that something comes to be from nothing (and neither he
nor any other physicist believes that); second, that when two atoms move
through the void one goes in a straight line and the other swerves. - Epicurus can concede that every proposition is either true or false
and still not fear that it is necessary that everything occur by fate. For
it is not in virtue of eternal causes derived from a necessity of nature
that the following proposition is true: "Carneades will go down to the
Academy"; but neither is it uncaused. Rather, there is a difference between
causes which just happen to precede [the event] and causes which contain
in themselves a natural efficacy. So it always was true that "Epicurus