CLASSICAL ANTIQUITY, MIDDLE AGES 49 



minute observations from a natural-scientific point of view and poetic 

 inspiration. 



Lucretius' influence upon posterity has been both lasting and important, 

 It is undoubtedly due mostly to him that atomism survived throughout the 

 Middle Ages, although in obscurity, owing to the hostility of the Church.'' 

 During the Renaissance he was held in high estimation; the greatest thinker 

 of that epoch, Giordano Bruno, was strongly influenced by him and in imita- 

 tion of him wrote several of his scientific works in verse form, and even the 

 free-thinkers of the eighteenth century studied him closely. Yet it can hardly 

 be said that he advanced the natural sciences. He has not succeeded in improv- 

 ing upon the atomic theory as created by Democritus; such progress as Aris- 

 totle made in the sphere of biological development he rejected with the 

 theory of finality upon which it rested, but without succeeding in substitut- 

 ing any better subjection to law. On the whole, atomism became a theory that 

 brought no benefit to natural research until in the beginning of the nineteenth 

 century it was, through Dalton, adopted in chemical research and, thanks 

 chiefly to Berzelius, became the most fruitful working hypothesis of that 

 science. Since then it has been one of the most important foundations on 

 which our idea of nature, both inorganic and organic, is based ; but the univer- 

 sal application which the ancient atomists ascribe to it it has not received; 

 no true natural philosopher of today hopes to be able to explain the phe- 

 nomena of animate life with its aid, although in quasi-scientific popular 

 literature attempts have been made to do so. 



^ In his Divina Commedia Dante relates that in hell there were several thousand "Epicu- 

 reans," among them many of the most eminent men of his own time. 



