CONCEPT OF AN ATOMIC UNIVERSE 141 



dulatory or vibratory theories of energy. Conceive our ether 

 theories of light and electricity falling to the ground and 

 Newtonian conceptions of corpuscles -coming back in their stead 

 we should needfully revert to essentially Democritan ideas 

 for our picture of mental processes. 



Be this as it may, and whether we choose to regard this 

 early prophet of the Unknowable as a materialist, what is cer- 

 tain is that we owe to Democritus, so far as our knowledge 

 extends, the idea of a world machine. His mechanical con- 

 ceptions, the mechanical conceptions of the ancients, could 

 scarcely have been the replica of ours. Such steam engines 

 as existed seem to have been little more than toys, or machina- 

 tions of the priests to strike terror and wonder into the minds 

 of the vulgar. Nor is it in the least clear that Democritus 

 had a mechanical turn of mind like, for example, Archimedes, 

 Archytas, or Hero of Alexandria. But in his idea of all existing 

 things as made up of particles, these particles in their motions 

 able to do wqrk, to exhibit energy, Democritus had, in its 

 essence, a purely mechanical conception of the phenomenal 

 world. His atoms were its instruments. 



Atoms and space, matter and the motions of matter, and 

 nothing more ; you perceive the consequence. If motes and 

 moons, if worlds and waters, if insects and trees, and all things 

 else but represent the permutation of eternal atoms, what we 

 call chance is but a phrase with which we clothe our ignorance 

 of events. From the simple combination of the atoms result 

 the phenomena which we observe, the events of which we are a 

 fleeting part. 



Democritus does not seem to have proclaimed himself an 

 atheist any more, for example, than did Mr. Spencer. Among 

 the Greeks the first of the deniers of the gods and their rule 

 of this world seems to have been his disciple Protagoras. We 

 gather that Democritus may have conceived the existence of 

 a race of super-men ; but if they existed, even these were a 

 part of a scheme which persisted through space and time. In 

 the Democritan concept, if there was a god, its name was law. 



It is needless to add that Democritus admitted no such 

 thing as freedom of the will. Since all was enchained ; since 

 one event inevitably follows from another ; since, again, in the 

 order of things which exists nothing can ever happen otherwise 

 than as it does, Democritus pictured all phenomena, the actions 



