406 LIFE OF DALTON : 



the way to other like researches, even had the principle of 

 enquiry not been suggested by the phenomena of the world 

 around them. 



However this may be, the absence of anything like analysis 

 limited the Greek philosophy to purely speculative doctrines 

 regarding matter, and the various concourse and combina- 

 tions of atoms to which its forms and qualities are due. Of 

 these theories the volume of Professor Daubeny now before 

 us (unpretending in form, but of great merit in execution) 

 gives a clear and sufficient account. Dr. Daubeny brings 

 indeed high qualifications to his work ; a philosophical spirit, 

 classical knowledge, and an intimate acquaintance with the 

 doctrines and discoveries of modern Chemistry. All are 

 required for the complete view of a subject of such wide 

 compass and singular complexity. 



The first great problem belonging to it one which has 

 engaged the attention of thinking men in all ages is the 

 origin and nature of Matter, as distinguished from mind or 

 Spirit, and also from that notion of the void in space which 

 has ever entered into the enquiry. The genius of the Greek 

 philosophy dealt with this question in its most abstruse forms ; 

 but not before such speculations had already found place in 

 the philosophical, religious, or popular dogmas of yet earlier 

 and more remote Oriental races, to whose mental tempera- 

 ment they seem to have been singularly congenial. Stripping 

 off the various dress and disguises of language, they are in 

 fact the self- same questions which have descended to our 

 own time ; and which we are destined to transmit (still 

 unresolved, though better defined) to our own philosophical 

 posterity. Unaided human reason, indeed, under whatever 

 form of words or logic it may shelter its weakness, must ever 

 be baffled by such questions as, Whether matter has any 

 existence apart from the perceptions of the intellectual 

 being ? Whether it is eternal in itself, and moulded only by 



