60 THE WORLD-ENERGY 



an irrepressible and more or less irresistible way of beat- 

 ing about among its neighbors as if it were a "little 

 demon/' preserves its own eminent domain inviolable. 

 The impetus given in such impacts would produce the 

 phenomena of repulsion, while the rebound', allowing the 

 atoms to be elastic, would give rise to like phenomena 

 in opposite directions, and the approach of atom to 

 atom in either way would likewise give rise to the phe- 

 nomena of attraction. At the same time, the tf ^void" 

 appears here in its primitive simplicity. 



Indeed, this theory approaches nearest to that of 

 Democritus, the difference, in one respect at least, being 

 that the cause of motion in the atoms is left as something 

 unknown, if not inexplicable, while, in the other, the 

 atom is assumed to have an inherent eternal motion 

 a kind of self-activity. From such crude "science" as 

 that of Democritus, indeed, one could hardly expect the 

 mythical element to be wholly excluded. Accordingly, 

 with him the atom seems to have been a sort of uncon- 

 scious symbolical eternizing of the beautiful, self-complete 

 divinities of the Greek popular faith. Thus, with the 

 father of the atomic theory, matter, or substance, was 

 absolutely discrete, and "bodies" such as those appealing 

 to our senses could only result from the accidental and 

 temporary aggregation of the ever-self-sufficient and, in 

 some sense, divine, atoms. 



It is also to be noted that, however superior the modern 

 methods of science, the impact theory still leaves us no 

 alternative. From this theory we must also accept the 

 absolute discreteness of matter, and thus find ourselves 

 forced into irreconcilable contradiction with the conception 

 of the continuity of matter. And this is as much as to 



