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_. After all then, Lucretius is reduced to ordinary moral suasion, and finds no new power or sanction that could keep erring human nature in the right path. And we must sadly allow that no real moral end is enunciated by him; his ideal seems to be quietism in this life, and annihilation afterwards.[545] It is a purely self-regarding rule of life. It is not even a social creed; neither family nor State seems to have any part in it, much less the unfortunate in this life, the poor, and the suffering. The poet never mentions slavery, or the crowded populations of great cities. It might almost be called a creed of fatalism, in which Natura plays much the same part as Fortuna did in the creed of many less noble spirits of that age.[546] Nature fights on; we cannot resist her, and cannot improve on her; it is better to acquiesce and obey than to try and rule her. Thus Lucretius' remedy fails utterly; it is that of an aristocratic intellect, not of a saviour of mankind.[547] So far as we know, it was entirely fruitless; like the constitution of Sulla his contemporary, the doctrine of Lucretius roused no sense of loyalty in Roman or Italian, because it was constructed with imperfect knowledge of the Roman and Italian nature. But it was a noble effort of a noble mind; and, apart from its literary greatness, it has incidentally a lasting value for all students of religious history, as showing better than anything else that has survived from that age the need of a real consecration of morality by the life and example of a Divine man.