Publisher's Synopsis
This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1909 edition. Excerpt: ...all, especially when the use of the latter violated the law he laid down for himself: Dicam, si potero, Latine, Tusc. I 15, and again, sermone eo debemus uti, qui innatus est nobis, De Off. I 111. Lucretius seems here to have lacked invention. He surely needed a term for his atoms that would in itself denote their indivisible constitution. Whether individuum in verse would have been tolerable to a Roman ear, there is no way to tell. We cannot know, therefore, whether Lucretius failed in ingenuity or whether he deliberately rejected the term. 3. Corpuscula.--Cicero derides the term as used by Amafinius Ac. I 6. He resorts to it, for all that, four times without apology, N.D. 166, 67; II 94; Tusc. 122. As in Lucretius the plural only is found. 4. Corpora.--Three points may be noticed differentiating slightly the Ciceronian from the Lucretian use of this term, (a) Corpus does not occur in Cicero as the single atom. The naturalization of atomus makes this use unnecessary. (b) The term corpora is frequently qualified by individua, not occurring in Lucretius, (c) The singular of corpus regularly indicates matter organized in contradistinction to the idea of matter unformed and ultimate indicated by materia. The use of corpora is otherwise identical with that of Lucretius. 5. Materia is the term of Cicero for original and unformed matter. Corpus is usually his term for matter organized. The origin of his use of the word materia is undoubtedly to be found in the Aristotelian Vktj, which was probably of common occurrence in the handbooks of the New Academy. The term materia cannot be regarded as a synonym of the atoms. It occurs but once in a discussion of the Epicurean system, Fin. I 18. The reference in the passage is to the original forming...
