Book VIII: Democritus and the People of Abdera

How do I hate the tide of vulgar thought!Profane, unjust, with childish folly fraught;It breaks and bends the rays of truth divine,And by its own conceptions measures mine.Famed Epicurus' master triedThe power of this unstable tide.His country said the sage was mad--The simpletons! But why?No prophet ever honour hadBeneath his native sky.Democritus, in truth, was wise;The mass were mad, with faith in lies.So far this error went,That all Abdera sentTo old HippocratesTo cure the sad disease.'Our townsman,' said the messengers,Appropriately shedding tears,'Hath lost his wits! Democritus,By study spoil'd, is lost to us.Were he but fill'd with ignorance,We should esteem him less a dunce.He saith that worlds like this exist,An absolutely endless list,--And peopled, even, it may be,With countless hosts as wise as we!But, not contented with such dreams,His brain with viewless "atoms" teems,Instinct with deathless life, it seems.And, never stirring from the sod below,He weighs and measures all the stars;And, while he knows the universe,Himself he doth not know.Though now his lips he strictly bars,He once delighted to converse.Come, godlike mortal, try thy art divineWhere traits of worst insanity combine!'Small faith the great physician lent,But still, perhaps more readily, he went.And mark what meetings strangeChance causes in this world of change!Hippocrates arrived in season,Just as his patient (void of reason!)Was searching whether reason's home,In talking animals and dumb,Be in the head, or in the heart,Or in some other local part.All calmly seated in the shade,Where brooks their softest music made,He traced, with study most insane,The convolutions of a brain;And at his feet lay many a scroll--The works of sages on the soul.Indeed, so much absorb'd was he,His friend, at first, he did not see.A pair so admirably match'd,Their compliments erelong despatch'd.In time and talk, as well as dress,The wise are frugal, I confess.Dismissing trifles, they beganAt once with eagerness to scanThe life, and soul, and laws of man;Nor stopp'd till they had travell'd o'er allThe ground, from, physical to moral.My time and space would failTo give the full detail.

But I have said enough to showHow little 'tis the people know.How true, then, goes the saw abroad--Their voice is but the voice of God?