TEE BELFAST A DDRES8, 445 
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 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,* a philosopher who may well for a moment 
arrest te= 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." Lauge 
speaks of Bacon's high appreciation of Democritus for 
ample illustrations of which I am indebted to my excellent 
friend Mr. Spedding, the learned editor and biographer 
of Bacon. It is evident, indeed, that Bacon considered 
Democritus to be a man of weightier metal than either 
Plato or Aristotle, though their philosophy " was noised 
and celebrated in the schools, amid the din and pomp of 
professors." It was not they ,[ but Genseric and Attila and 
the barbarians, who destroyed the atomic philosophy? 
"For, at a time when all human learning had suffered 
shipwreck, these planks of Aristotelian and Platonic 
philosophy, as being of a lighter and more inflated sub- 
stance, were preserved and came down to us, while things 
more solid sank and almost passed into oblivion." 
The son of a wealthy father, Democritus devoted the 
whole of his inherited fortune to the culture of his mind. 
He traveled everywhere; visited Athens when [ Socrates 
and Plato/were there, but quitted the city without making 
himself known. Indeed, the dialectic strife in which 
Socrates so much delighted, had no charm for Democritus, 
* Born 460 B. c. 
