But, now again to weave the tale begun, 
All nature, then, as self-sustained, consists 
Of twain of things: of bodies and of void 
In which they're set, and where they're moved around. 
For common instinct of our race declares 
That body of itself exists: unless 
This primal faith, deep-founded, fail us not, 
Naught will there be whereunto to appeal 
On things occult when seeking aught to prove 
By reasonings of mind. Again, without 
That place and room, which we do call the inane, 
Nowhere could bodies then be set, nor go 
Hither or thither at all- as shown before. 
Besides, there's naught of which thou canst declare 
It lives disjoined from body, shut from void- 
A kind of third in nature. For whatever 
Exists must be a somewhat; and the same, 
If tangible, however fight and slight, 
Will yet increase the count of body's sum, 
With its own augmentation big or small; 
But, if intangible and powerless ever 
To keep a thing from passing through itself 
On any side, 'twill be naught else but that 
Which we do call the empty, the inane. 
Again, whate'er exists, as of itself, 
Must either act or suffer action on it. 
Or else be that wherein things move and be: 
Naught, saving body, acts, is acted on; 
Naught but the inane can furnish room. And thus, 
Beside the inane and bodies, is no third 
Nature amid the number of all things- 
Remainder none to fall at any time 
Under our senses, nor be seized and seen 
By any man through reasonings of mind. 
Name o'er creation with what names thou wilt, 
Thou'lt find but properties of those first twain, 
Or see but accidents those twain produce. 

A property is that which not at all 
Can be disjoined and severed from a thing 
Without a fatal dissolution: such, 
Weight to the rocks, heat to the fire, and flow 
To the wide waters, touch to corporal things, 
Intangibility to the viewless void. 
But state of slavery, pauperhood, and wealth, 
Freedom, and war, and concord, and all else 
Which come and go whilst Nature stands the same, 
We're wont, and rightly, to call accidents. 
Even time exists not of itself; but sense 
Reads out of things what happened long ago, 
What presses now, and what shall follow after: 
No man, we must admit, feels time itself, 
Disjoined from motion and repose of things. 
Thus, when they say there "is" the ravishment 
Of Princess Helen, "is" the siege and sack 
Of Trojan Town, look out, they force us not 
To admit these acts existent by themselves, 
Merely because those races of mankind 
(Of whom these acts were accidents) long since 
Irrevocable age has borne away: 
For all past actions may be said to be 
But accidents, in one way, of mankind,- 
In other, of some region of the world. 
Add, too, had been no matter, and no room 
Wherein all things go on, the fire of love 
Upblown by that fair form, the glowing coal 
Under the Phrygian Alexander's breast, 
Had ne'er enkindled that renowned strife 
Of savage war, nor had the wooden horse 
Involved in flames old Pergama, by a birth 
At midnight of a brood of the Hellenes. 
And thus thou canst remark that every act 
At bottom exists not of itself, nor is 
As body is, nor has like name with void; 
But rather of sort more fitly to be called 
An accident of body, and of place 
Wherein all things go on.