PROFESSOR TYNBALUS ADDRESS. 653 



species of hiiman creatures, perhaps raised from among mankind, and 

 retaining all human passions and appetites," ^ were handed over the 

 rule and governance of natural phenomena. 



Tested by observation and reflection, these early notions failed in 

 the long-run to satisfy the more penetrating intellects of our race. 

 Far in the depths of history we find men of exceptional power differ- 

 entiating themselves from the crowd, rejecting these anthropomorphic 

 notions, and seeking to connect natural phenomena with their physi- 

 cal principles. But, long prior to these purer efforts of the understand- 

 ing, the merchant had been abroad, and rendered the philosopher pos- 

 sible : commerce had been developed, wealth amassed, leisure for 

 travel and for speculation secured, while races educated under differ- 

 ent conditions, and therefore differently informed and endowed, had 

 been stimulated and* sharpened by mutual contact. In those regions 

 where the commercial aristocracy of ancient Greece mingled with its 

 Eastern neighbors, the sciences were bora, being nurtured and devel- 

 oped by free-thinking and courageous men. The state of things to 

 be displaced may be gathered from a passage of Euripides quoted by 

 Hume : " There is nothing in the world ; no glory, no prosperity. 

 The gods toss all into confusion ; mix every thing with its reverse, 

 that all of us, from our ignorance and uncertainty, may pay them the 

 more worship and reverence." Now, as science demands the radical 

 extirpation of caprice and the absolute reliance upon law in Nature, 

 there grew with the growth of scientific notions a desire and determi- 

 nation to sweep from the field of theory this mob of gods and demons, 

 and to place natural phenomena on a basis more congruent with them- 

 selves. 



The problem which had been previously approached from above 

 was now attacked from below ; theoretic effort passed from the super- 

 to the sub-sensible. It was felt that to construct the universe in idea 

 it was necessary to have some notion of its constituent parts — of what 

 Lucretius subsequently called the "First Beginnings." Abstracting 

 again from experience, the leaders of scientific speculation reached at 

 length the pregnant doctrine of atoms and molecules, the latest de- 

 velopments of which were set forth with such power and clearness at 

 the last meeting of the British Association. Thought no doubt had 

 long hovered about this doctrine before it attained the precision and 

 completeness which it assumed in the mind of Democritus,^ a philoso- 

 pher who may well for a moment arrest our attention. " Few great 

 men," says Lange, in his excellent " History of Materialism," a work 

 to the spirit and the letter of which I am equally indebted, " have 

 been so despitefully used by history as Democritus. In the distorted 

 images sent down to us through unscientific traditions there remains 

 of him almost nothing but the name of the 'laughing philosopher,' 

 while figures of immeasurably smaller significance spread themselyes 

 * Hume, " Natural History of Religion." ' Born 460 b. c. 



