All things obey fixed laws.

Do we not see all humans unaware Of what they want, and always searching everywhere, And changing place, as if to drop the load they bear?

The dreadful fear of hell is to be driven out, which disturbs the life of man and renders it miserable, overcasting all things with the blackness of darkness, and leaving no pure, unalloyed pleasure.

Mother of Aeneas, pleasure of men and gods. -Aeneadum genetrix, hominum divomque voluptas

I return to the newborn world, and the soft-soil fields, What their first birthing lifted to the shores Of light, and trusted to the wayward winds. First the Earth gave the shimmer of greenery And grasses to deck the hills; then over the meadows The flowering fields are bright with the color of springtime, And for all the trees that shoot into the air.

Some species increase, others diminish, and in a short space the generations of living creatures are changed and, like runners, pass on the torch of life.

At this stage you must admit that whatever is seen to be sentient is nevertheless composed of atoms that are insentient. The phenomena open to our observation so not contradict this conclusion or conflict with it. Rather they lead us by the hand and compel us to believe that the animate is born, as I maintain, of the insentient.