SCIENCE AND REVOLUTION 



already in the final stages of disintegration, as a 

 result of the conquests of Alexander the Great. 

 Epicurus tried to represent the mind as a part 

 of the atomic world, as a tangible object. Here 

 we also find a first faint attempt to check the 

 crude fatalism and predestinarian logic of Dem- 

 okritos by giving to this materialist mind a lim- 

 ited scope of free will through the admission of 

 the possibility of accident. While Demokritos 

 believed in merely two primitive movements of 

 his atoms, a falling and a rebounding motion, 

 Epicurus introduced the idea of a deviation of the 

 atoms from the straight line. But his philosophy, 

 as well as that of all his predecessors, suffered 

 from the insufficiency of empirical data for the 

 substantiation of his theories. And with the dis- 

 solution of Grecian civilization, Grecian philos- 

 ophy fell into the hands of men representing other 

 classes and other environments. The result was 

 an adaptation of Grecian philosophy to the re- 

 quirements of these new men and conditions. 



V. A STEP BACKWARD IN ROME 



While Grecian philosophy had been climbing 

 to the peaks of its greatness, Rome had been 



