132 THE WORLD MACHINE 



of the earth he could reach. True, the accessible world was 

 not then very wide ; be that as it may, the youth returned 

 when youth was gone, versed in all the priestly lore of Egypt 

 and Chaldea rich beyond any contemporary in knowledge, 

 and without a sou. 



There in his native Abdera he thought and worked, observed 

 incessantly, tested minutely his perceptions and his sensations ; 

 joked too, it seems, reflected, read, and wrote. By-and-by, in 

 the public square, Democritus opened the pages of his great 

 work, Diakosmos, and read aloud to him who would listen. It 

 was said that he predicted the weather, and other events as 

 well, and remembering his training at the hands of the magicians, 

 the simple Abderites had little trouble in believing him very 

 near a god. Pliny tells a story of how he could raise the dead ; 

 but this, of course, was a common legend of credulous antiquity, 

 and told of many men. 



Whether he did or no, they put up votive tablets in his 

 honour whilst yet he lived, and as there was then a law that 

 whoso had spent his patrimony should be denied a decent burial, 

 'tis told they gave the philosopher a purse of five hundred 

 talents. The sum is large; the revenues of Alexander's 

 empire were annually scarce so great. The historians of that 

 day were as prodigal of money and numbers as the Chinese 

 of time. No matter, 'twas said he laughed so hard at all the 

 follies of the world, some thought him mad, and sent for the 

 famed Hippocrates to cure his distemper. But Hippocrates, 

 when he had come, smiled and went away, remarking upon 

 the charm and fascination of his discourse. 



He lived to be fabulously old a hundred or more ; but 

 before he had finished he seems to have swept through every 

 science known to his day. Diogenes Laertius gives a list of 

 seventy-two of his books ; not one remains. We may regret 

 the loss, for not only does he seem to have had one of the most 

 acute and piercing minds of any age, but evidently he knew 

 as well the witchery of the syllables, the charm of the cadenced 

 period, the enchantment of the deftly-woven phrase. It is 

 the testimony of Cicero, and here at least there could be no 

 weightier judge, that he wrote in a style which, for its poetic 

 beauty, was worthy to set beside that of Plato. 



He was a modest man ; he began his chief work, " I am 

 going to write of everything," and he very nearly did. If we 



