THE BELFAST ADDRESS 147 



ship 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 no- 

 tions, a desire and determination to sweep from the field 

 of theory this mob of gods and demons, and to place nat- 

 ural 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 Lu- 

 cretius subsequently called the "First Beginnings." Ab- 

 stracting again from experience, the leaders of scientific 

 speculation reached at length the pregnant doctrine of 

 atoms and molecules, the latest developments 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, 1 a philosopher who may well for a 

 moment arrest our attention. "Few great men," says 

 Lange, a non-materialist, in his excellent "History of 

 Materialism," to the spirit and to 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 philoso- 

 pher,' while figures of immeasurably smaller significance 

 spread themselves out at full length before us." Lange 



1 Born 460 B.C. 



