136 THE WORLD MACHINE 



no doubt, of the notions of Anaxagoras, that all things are made 

 up of homeomerice, or similar parts ; of the ideas of Leukippus 

 as well. It seems to have been the latter who first pictured 

 bodies as made of indivisible particles or atoms. The spirit 

 of inquiry was in the air, and Democritus, starting from these 

 suggestive ideas as did Spencer from the speculations of von 

 Baer, was carried far. The scheme of the world, as it shaped 

 itself in the mind of Democritus, was crystalline in its simplicity. 

 The ring upon the finger, the stone steps before the door, the 

 toe of the graven saints under the incessant kisses of the faithful, 

 wear away, subtly, imperceptibly, without that from day to 

 day one may perceive aught of change. The pot, boiling upon 

 the hearth, the pools of water in the sun, dry up ; their con- 

 tents disappear, one scarce knows how. Linen, hanging by the 

 shore, before a beating surf, becomes damp ; expose it to the 

 heat, it dries again. Evidently the water, the stone image, 

 the metal of the ring, is made up of particles too fine to be 

 visible or perceptible to touch. 



Doubtless the same is true of all matter whatsoever, whether 

 it be " living " or " dead." The grain sprouts, the stalk forms, 

 the flowers or the great oak unfurl, in precisely the same way 

 as the idol's toe disappears, subtly, imperceptibly, elusively. 

 Obviously they are formed by the aggregation, as the others are 

 destroyed by the disaggregation, of exceedingly minute parts. 

 We witness the same process when a lump of sugar dissolves 

 in a glass of water, or when a layer of salt crystallises out of a 

 pan of salt water when it is evaporated. 



When the sugar or the salt disappear in the solvent, how 

 far does the process of disaggregation go ? infinitely ? We 

 may take a glass of salt water and mix it with another of fresh ; 

 the salt taste grows a little weaker ; but it is evenly distributed 

 throughout every drop of water. Repeat the process, and the 

 result, though the salt taste grows still fainter, is the same. 

 May we keep on doing this for ever ? By-and-by the salt taste 

 is gone utterly ; but we have only to evaporate the mass of 

 water again and secure all of the salt ; none has disappeared. 



But how far can the process of disaggregation be carried ; 

 how finely can the grains of salt be split up ? So constituted 

 is the human mind that any limit is unimaginable. We cannot 

 think of an object so small that it cannot be cut in two, each 

 of these parts divided again, and again, and again, and so on 



