HO THE WORLD MACHINE 



sophers going over the same ground and digging from obscurity 

 Democritus' ideas. Along about the middle of the seventeenth 

 century we find Boyle utilising them to found the modern science 

 of chemistry. A little later, with Newton, was revealed the 

 law of that force of attraction which exists between every 

 atom of matter in the universe. 



Democritus has often been styled the'grandsire of materialism. 

 It is a school of philosophy that is a little out of fashion nowa- 

 days ; yet it is worthy of note that practically all of the modern 

 advance in our ideas of this world has been grounded upon 

 his conceptions. Practically speaking, materialistic assumptions 

 are simply unescapable in physical investigations. But it is 

 to be noted that philosophically Democritus was far from the 

 crude dogmas of Buchner and his kind. It is difficult to judge 

 of a doctrine from fragments. Moreover, as dreary shelvesfull 

 of vacuous volumes on the history of philosophy so amply 

 attest, it is possible to read into the ideas of the ancients much 

 of anything that one likes. But so far as one may judge, 

 Democritus in his order of ideas came nearer to those of 

 Herbert Spencer than perhaps any of our moderns, with the 

 difference, perhaps, that to the Underlying Reality he gave a 

 name where Mr. Spencer declined. Both recognised equally 

 that the ultimate is in its essence unknowable ; " the truth lies 

 in the depths." 



If Democritus is to be accounted a materialist at all, it 

 must be in that larger Tyndallian sense which sees in matter 

 " the promise and potency of all terrestrial life." This was 

 clearly the teachings of the Abderan. The body was made up 

 of material atoms, the brain as well ; the mind is a function of 

 the brain, and for him the soul was the mind. It was made up 

 of " fine smooth round atoms, similar to the atoms of fire " ; 

 these are the most mobile of all ; penetrating the body, they 

 give rise to the phenomena of life. Substitute for the " fine 

 smooth round atoms " of Democritus the " animal spirits " of 

 Descartes and we know as much of one as the other and it 

 will be perceived that his ideas did not differ very differently 

 from those of the founder of modern neurology. 



Thing curious to note : so far as modern thought forms 

 any picture of mind, memory, and the soul, it is largely along 

 lines of Hartley's vibrations, to all intents a parallel to the un- 



