434 THOUGHTS ON THE 



him reflect that things in their units and their aggregates, 

 are equally mastered by calculation. For one expresses or 

 conceives with the same facility a thousand years and a 

 thousand moments, though years are composed of multi 

 tudes of moments. And again, let no one think, that such 

 studies are matter of speculative curiosity, rather than 

 connected with practical effects and uses. For it is obser 

 vable that almost all the philosophers and others, who have 

 most intensely busied themselves, who have probed nature 

 to the quick as it were, in the process of experiment and 

 practical detail ; have been led on to such investigations, 

 though unfortunate in the mode of conducting them. Nor 

 does there exist a more powerful and more certain cause of 

 that utter barrenness of utility which distinguishes the phi 

 losophy of the day, than its ambitious affectation of sub- 

 tilty about mere words or vulgar notions, while it has 

 neither pursued nor planned a well supported investigation 

 of the subtilty of nature. 



Of the equality or inequality of Atoms, or seminal Particles. 



ii. 



The theories and maxims of Pythagoras were for the 

 most part better adapted to found a peculiar order of reli 

 gionists, than to open a new school in philosophy, as was 

 verified by the event. For that system of training pre 

 vailed and flourished more under the sway of the Mani- 

 cheean heresy and Mahomedan superstition, than among 

 philosophic individuals. Notwithstanding this, his opinion 

 that the world was composed of numbers, may be taken in 

 a sense in which it goes deep into the elementary principles 

 of nature. For there are (as indeed there may be) two 

 doctrines with respect to atoms or seminal particles ; the 

 one that of Democritus, which ascribes to atoms inequality 

 one to another, figure, and in virtue of figure position ; the 

 other that of Pythagoras perhaps, which affirms them to 

 be all precisely equal and alike. Now he who ascribes to 

 atoms equality, necessarily makes all things depend on 

 numbers ; while he who clothes them with other attributes, 

 admits in addition to mere numbers, or modes of assemblage, 

 certain primitive properties inherent in single atoms. Now 

 the practical question collateral to the theoretical one, and 

 which ought to determine its limits, is this, which Demo 

 critus proposes ; whether all things can be made out of all ? 

 To me, however, this question appears not to have been ma 

 turely weighed, if it be understood as referring, to an imme- 



