For you will find that everything for which we have a name Is either a quality of the two, or consequence of the same. A quality is what, without obliterating shock, Can never be separated and removed: as weight to rock, As heat to flame, wet to water, the ability to touch To every substance, intangibility to the void. But such As slavery, penury and riches, freedom, war and peace, Whatever comes and goes while natures stay unchanging, these We rightly tend to term as ‘consequences’ or ‘events’. Lucretius, De Rerum Natura, Book 1, lines 449–57
