Book 10
1.115
or it may be due to the meeting of atoms capable of generating fire, which accord so well as to produce this result, and their subsequent motion wherever the impulse which brought them together at first leads them; or it may be that wind collects in certain dense mist-like masses and, since it is imprisoned, ignites and then bursts forth upon whatever is round about it, and is carried to that place to which its motion impels it. And there are other ways in which this can be brought about without recourse to myths.
1.115
The fact that the weather is sometimes foretold from the behaviour of certain animals is a mere coincidence in time.Cf.§ 98, The same topic is now treated again. Usener, who attributed this whole epistle to a compiler, believed that both passages were taken from the same part of Epicurus’s On Nature. For the animals offer no necessary reason why a storm should be produced; and no divine being sits observing when these animals go out and afterwards fulfilling the signs which they have given.
1.116
For such folly as this would not possess the most ordinary being if ever so little enlightened, much less one who enjoys perfect felicity.
1.116
All this, Pythocles, you should keep in mind; for then you will escape a long way from myth, and you will be able to view in their connexion the instances which are similar to these. But above all give yourself up to the study of first principles and of infinity and of kindred subjects, and further of the standards and of the feelings and of the end for which we choose between them. For to study these subjects together will easily enable you to understand the causes of the particular phenomena. And those who have not fully accepted this, in proportion as they have not done so, will be ill acquainted with these very subjects, nor have they secured the end for which they ought to be studied.
1.117
Such are his views on celestial phenomena.
