148 FRAGMENTS OF SCIENCE 



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speaks of Bacon's liigh appreciation of Democritus — ^for 

 ample illustrations of which I am indebted to my excel- 

 lent friend Mr. Spedding, the learned editor and biog- 

 rapher of Bacon. It is evident, indeed, that Bacon con- 

 sidered Democritus to be a man of weightier metal than 

 either Plato or Aristotle, though their philosophy "was 

 noised and celebrated in the schools, amid the din and 

 pomp of professors." It was not they, but Grenseric and 

 Attila and the barbarians, who destroyed the atomic phi- 

 losophy. "For, at a time when all human learning had 

 suffered shipwreck, these planks of Aristotelian and Pla- 

 tonic philosophy, as being of a lighter and more inflated 

 substance, were preserved and came down to us, while 

 things more solid sank and almost passed into oblivion." 



The son of a wealthy father, Democritus devoted the 

 whole of his inherited fortune to the culture of his mind. 

 He travelled everywhere; visited Athens when Socrates 

 and Plato were there, but quitted the city without mak- 

 ing himself known. Indeed, the dialectic strife in which 

 Socrates so much delighted had no charm for Democritus, 

 who held that "the man who readily contradicts, and uses 

 many words, is unfit to learn anything truly right." He 

 is said to have discovered and educated Protagoras the 

 Sophist, being struck as much by the manner in which 

 he, being a hewer of wood, tied up his fagots, as by the 

 sagacity of his conversation. Democritus returned poor 

 from his travels, was supported by his brother, and at 

 length wrote his great work entitled "Diakosmos," which 

 he read publicly before the people of his native town. 

 He was honored by his countrymen in various ways, and 

 died serenely at a great age. 



The principles enunciated by Democritus reveal his un- 



