It is also characteristic of Lucretius as a Roman that while he accepted a philosophy that made all creation kin—in this respect Lucretius may be considered the founder of philosophic Romanticism—he refused to abandon the classical humanism that insisted upon seeing in man the master of his own destiny. There is no doubt about the strong drift toward romanticism throughout the poem. Man is here inseparable from nature. The fiery temper of a choleric man, like the ferocity of the lion, is traced to the atomic composition of the soul.[13] The cool-tempered ox partakes of elements that predominate in men of prudence, and cowardice in man is explained physically as akin to the trembling of the deer. In all this, man is removed from the pedestal to which idealistic philosophy had elevated him, and by a back door, as it were, brought back again into Pan’s forest where in the past humans had played with Satyrs and quadrupeds in the happy days of Mythopoeia. That Lucretius fully comprehended the poetic importance of this scientific kinship of all living things is apparent from his proemium where spring is pictured as the mating season, the season of song and joy, for all creation without distinction: Et genus aequoreum, pecudes, pictaeque volucres— Amor omnibus idem. For soon as the vernal aspect of day is disclosed, and the birth-favouring breeze of Favonius unbarred is blowing fresh, first the fowls of the air, O Venus, show signs of thee and thy entering in, thoroughly smitten in heart by thy power. Next the wild herds bound over the glad pastures and swim the rapid rivers: in such wise, each made prisoner by thy charms, follows thee with desire, whither thou goest to lead it on. Yes, throughout seas and mountains and sweeping rivers and leafy homes of birds and grassy plains, striking fond love into the breasts of all thou constrainest them each after its kind to continue their races with desire. Here first in literature we get, emerging out of atomic science, the spring poetry of Troubadour song. Lucretius drew out of his science the full value of Romantic poetry.