On the Nature of the Universe (Oxford World’s Classics) by Ronald Melville, Don, Peta Fowler Page B

all the space between them
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Must be void until it is occupied by air.
 
And however quickly air flows in all round,
 
It cannot at once fill all the vacant space;
 
It must fill first one place and then the next
 
Until it gains possession of the whole.
 
If anyone thinks that when bodies have sprung apart
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What happens is that the air becomes compressed,
 
He’s wrong; for in this case a void is made
 
That was not there before, and likewise
 
A void is filled which previously existed.
 
Air cannot be compressed in such a way;
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Nor if it could, could it, I think, without void
 
Shrink into itself and draw its parts together.
 
Wherefore whatever pleas you may advance
 
To prolong your argument, yet in the end
 
You must admit that there is void in things.
 
And many another proof I can adduce
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To scrape up credit for my arguments.
 
But to a mind keen-scented these small traces
 
Suffice: from them you’ll grasp the rest yourself.
 
As mountain-ranging hounds find by their scent
 
The lair of beast in leafy covert hid
 
Once they have got some traces of its track,
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So one thing after another you by yourself
 
Will find that you can see, in these researches,
 
And penetrate all unseen hiding places
 
And draw the truth from them.
 
But if you are weary and find the going too hard
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There’s one thing, Memmius, I can safely promise you:
 
Such bounteous draughts from springs o’er-flowing drawn
 
With sweetest tongue my well-stored mind will pour
 
That first I fear slow-moving age will creep
 
Over our limbs and loose the bonds of life
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Before the full store of my arguments
 
On any single thing has filled your ears.
 
But now, to pick up the thread of my discourse,
 
All nature, as it is in itself, consists
 
Of two things: there are bodies and there is void
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In which these bodies are and through which they move.
 
The senses which are common to men declare
 
That body has a separate existence.
 
Without faith firmly founded in our senses
 
There will be no standard to which we can refer
 
In hidden matters, giving us the power
 
To establish anything by reasoning.
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If there were no place and space, which we call void,
 
Bodies could not be situated anywhere
 
And they would totally lack the power of movement,
 
As I explained a little time ago.
 
Now here’s a further point. Nothing exists
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Which you could say is wholly distinct from body
 
And separate from void—a third nature of some kind.
 
For whatever exists must in itself be something;
 
If touch affects it however light and small
 
It will increase the amount of matter by much or little,
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Provided it does exist, and swell its sum.
 
But if it is intangible, and cannot prevent
 
Anything anywhere from passing through it,
 
Doubtless it will be what we call empty void.
 
Besides, whatever exists will either act on things
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Or else react to other things acting on it,
 
Or it will be such that things can happen in it.
 
But without body nothing can act or react
 
And nothing can give place save emptiness and void.
 
Therefore apart from void and matter no third substance
 
Can remain to be numbered in the sum of things,
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Neither one that falls within the range of senses
 
Nor one that mind can grasp by reasoning.
 
For you will find that all things that can be named
 
Are either properties of these two things
 
Or else you can see that they are accidents of them.
 
A property is something that cannot be separated
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Or removed from a thing without destroying it.
 
As weight to rocks, wetness to water, heat to fire,
 
Touch to all bodies, intangibility to void.
 
But slavery, by contrast, poverty and riches
 
Freedom, war, peace and all such things
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As may come and go but leave things in their essence
 
Intact, these, as is right, we call accidents.
 
Time likewise does not exist by itself,
 
But a sense follows from things themselves
 
Of what has been done