"you needed only to comprehend that there is a hidden natural explanation for everything that alarms or eludes you. That explanation will inevitably lead you back to atoms. If you can hold on to and repeat to yourself the simplest fact of existence--atoms and void and nothing else, atoms and void and nothing else, atoms and void and nothing else--your life will change. You will no longer fear Jove's wrath, whenever you hear a peal of thunder, or suspect that someone has offended Apollo, whenever there is an outbreak of influenza. And you will be freed from a terrible affliction--what Hamlet, many centuries later, described as "the dread of something after death,/The undiscovered country from whose bourn/No traveller returns."