ATOMIC THEOKY. 411 



ingly permeating every part of space with inconceivable 

 swiftness. From the fortuitous concourse, collision, and 

 adaptation of these atoms, thus eternally in motion, the 

 material world is formed, and the various compound bodies 

 upon it are successively generated, changed, or renewed. 

 The seeming attribution of creative power to the self-organ- 

 ising nature of the atoms themselves, and the negative con- 

 dition assigned to the gods by Lucretius, have drawn down 

 the reproach of atheism on this system. It may more justly 

 perhaps be called an abandonment of the popular mythology 

 of the age in which the poet lived. 



This is the outline of the doctrine. The details, whether 

 furnished by philosophy or poetry, we have little room to 

 dwell upon. It has not been the fortune of any other 

 philosophical hypothesis (unless we suppose an exception in 

 the lost writings of Empedocles) to be thus ( married to im- 

 mortal verse.' It may be alleged that the greatness of the 

 poem of Lucretius was nob so estimated by his contempo- 

 raries, and we admit the fact ; but attribute it chiefly to the 

 nature of his subject, less congenial to the mind of Rome 

 than to that of Greece, and which even Cicero scantily admits 

 within the pale of .his philosophy. Still we confess our sur- 

 prise to find in Ovid the only adequate acknowledgement of 

 the grandeur of Lucretius as a poet ; and that Quintilian, a 

 consummate critic, should notice him in terms of such bald 

 and languid commendation. 



Quitting this sketch of the ancient atomic doctrines, and 

 passing over, as almost null, all that the mediaeval philosophy 

 and even the Arabian chemistry produced, we proceed to the 

 later opinions sanctioned by the great names of Descartes, 

 Newton, Leibnitz, and Boscovich. Newton, attributing to 

 God the first creation of primitive units or particles of matter, 

 describes their endowments in terms not unlike those which 

 Lucretius applies to his self-acting atoms. Leibnitz, resting 



