The Stoic Creed - College of Stoic Philosophers

"
no
THE STOIC CREED
are eternal or uncreated, and indestructible strong
in their solid singleness."
This last property of in
destructibility, implying in it indivisibility, belongs to
them because of their exceptional hardness and solidity
:
they have no void or empty space within them ;
there
fore they cannot be broken up (hence the name aro/xo?,
atom). Their motion, too, is indestructible. They
are infinite in number, and have an indefinite (unlimited,
though not absolutely limitless) number of shapes,
sizes, and weights. They possess no secondary
qualities such as colour, taste, smell. They move
naturally in parallel straight lines downwards, like
rain falling perpendicularly from the heavens to the
earth. And yet, if this perpendicular downward motion
were the sole one, it would be impossible for matter to
form into masses there could be no such thing as
aggregation, and the formation of the world would be
impossible. Accordingly, a further supposition is
necessary namely,
that the atoms have in them the
power of swerving or declining from the straight line,
even though it be but to the smallest possible extent
the power of passing out of the orderly march of the
regular atomic dance, symbolized by the motes in a
sunbeam, and so of crossing each other and of coming
into contact and collision, thereby rendering combina
tion and interaction possible.
"This
point of the subject also," says Lucretius
(ii. 216-224), wish "we you to understand namely,
that atoms, when they are borne straight downwards
own weight, do usually, at
through the void by their
an uncertain time and at uncertain places, push them
selves a little from their course, just so far that you