On The Nature Of Things

Lucretius’ theological teachings are sadly incomplete, since he died before revising his work, but he states the major points clearly throughout the poem. In Epicurean thought, fear of the gods is one of the greatest barriers to peace of mind; it is also entirely misplaced. The gods, Lucretius tells us, are not directly involved in our world. They did not create it, nor did they create us; as he observes, the world could not have been created for us by sentient beings, because “it is marked by such serious flaws” (Book II, lines 180-181; page 40). Furthermore, the gods have no interest in human affairs, and our prayers and sacrifices have no influence on them.

This is not to say that the gods do not exist, or that they are unimportant. According to Lucretius, they simply inhabit a realm that is beyond our world, out in space, beyond the sky. The nature of the gods is “so tenuous, and so far removed from our senses, that it is scarcely perceptible even to the mind” (Book V, line 149; page 141). We do occasionally see the gods, however, in the form of “images”: every object emits a thin layer of particles, called an “image,” which allows us to see it; when images emitted by the gods penetrate into our world, they are too thin for our eyes to see, but they penetrate straight to our minds as dreams or visions.