It is here that Lucretius seems for awhile to leave the authority of Epicurus; and with the inspiration of a poet, which is hardly consistent with a total absence of veneration and faith, to forsake his cold and heartless system. Although he asserts that the phenomena of nature are the result of a combination of atoms, that these elementary particles are self-existent and eternal, he seems to invest nature with a sort of personality. The warm sensibility of the poet overcomes the cold logic of the philosopher. Dissatisfied with the ungenial idea of an abstract lifeless principle, he yearns for the maternal caresses of a being endued with energies and faculties with which he can sympathize. He therefore ascribes to nature an attribute which can only belong to an intelligent agent having ruling power. Nay, he even goes farther than this, and absolutely contradicts the dogmas of the Epicurean school. Even the works of nature are represented as instinct with life.[485] The sun is spoken of as a being who, by the warmth of his beams, vivifies all things: the earth, from whose womb all things spring, fosters and nurtures all her children. The very stars may possibly be living beings, performing their stated motions in search of their proper sustenance.[486] These are, doubtless, the fancies of the poet rather than the grave and serious belief of the philosopher; but they prove how false, hollow, and artificial is a system which pretends to account for creation by natural causes, and how earnestly the human mind craves after the comfort and support of a personal deity. The denial of the immortality of the soul is inferred from the destructibility of the material elements out of which it is composed. It must perish immediately that it is deprived of the protection of the body.[487] In accordance with this psychical theory, he accounts for the difference of human tempers and characters. Character results from the combination of the elementary principles:—a predominance of heat produces the choleric disposition; that of wind produces timidity; that of air a calm and equable temper.[488] But this natural constitution, the strength of the will, acted upon by education, is able, to a certain extent, to modify, though it cannot effect a complete change. Thus it is that, although moral as well as physical phenomena are produced in accordance with fixed laws, human ills result from unbridled passions, and may be remedied by philosophy.