He seems to have combined two Italian types of character, which never have been united before or since,--that of the ecclesiastic, earnest and dogmatic, seeing human nature from a doctrinal platform, not working and thinking with it; and secondly the poetic type, of which Dante is the noblest example, perfectly clear and definite in inward and outward vision, and illuminating all that it touches with an indescribable glow of pure poetic imagination.
Lucretius' secret then is knowledge,[544]--not the dilettanteism of the day, but real scientific knowledge of a single philosophical attempt to explain the universe,--the atomic theory of the Epicurean school.

Democritus and Epicurus are the only saviours,--of this Lucretius never had the shadow of a doubt.

As the result of this knowledge, the whole supernatural and spiritual world of fancy vanishes, together with all futile hopes or fears of a future life.
The gods, if they exist, will cease to be of any importance to mankind, as having no interest in him, and doing him neither good nor harm.

Chimaeras, portents, ghosts, death, and all that frightens the ignorant and paralyses their energies, will vanish in the pure light of this knowledge; man will have nothing to be afraid of but himself.
Nor indeed need he fear himself when he has mastered "the truth." By that time, as the scales of fear fall from his eyes, his moral balance will be recovered; the blind man will see.

What will he see?
What is the moral standard that will become clear to him, the sanction of right living that will grip his conscience?
It is simply the conviction that as this life is all we have in past, present, or future, it _must be used well_.