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How I have always hated the thoughts of the vulgar!
How profane, unjust, and reckless they seem to me;
Placing false middle grounds between the thing and themselves,
And measuring what they see in others by themselves!
The master of Epicurus learned this.
His country thought him mad: Little minds! but what of it?
No one is a prophet in his own land.
These people were the madmen, Democritus the wise.
The error went so far that Abdera sent a deputation
To Hippocrates, and invited him,
By letters and by embassy,
To come restore the sick man’s reason.
Our fellow citizen, they said weeping,
Is losing his mind: reading has spoiled Democritus.
We would esteem him more if he were ignorant.
No number, he says, limits the worlds:
Perhaps even they are filled
With infinite Democrituses.
Not content with this dream he adds atoms to it,
Children of an empty brain, invisible phantoms;
And, measuring the heavens without moving from down here,
He knows the universe and does not know himself.
There was a time when he could settle debates;
Now he talks to himself.
Come, divine mortal; his madness is extreme.
Hippocrates did not have too much faith in these people:
However he departed: And see, I beg you,
What encounters in life
Fate causes; Hippocrates arrived at the time
When the one said to have neither reason nor sense
Was seeking in man and in beast
Where reason has its seat, whether in the heart or the head.
Under a thick shade, seated near a stream,
The labyrinths of a brain
Occupied him. He had at his feet many a volume,
And hardly saw his friend advance,
Attached as was his custom.
Their compliment was short, as one might think.
The wise man is economical with time and words.
Having therefore set aside frivolous conversations,
And reasoned much about man and about the mind,
They fell upon morals.
There is no need for me to display
All that each of them said.
The preceding account suffices
To show that the people are a challengeable judge.
In what sense then is it true
What I have read in a certain place,
That its voice is the voice of God?
Jean de La Fontaine
Translation generated by Poésies 123 with assistance from the deepseek-chat artificial-intelligence model.
Text published on Poésies 123: https://www.poesies123.com/en/poem-democritus-and-the-abderitans-jean-de-la-fontaine/