ON ATOMS. 453 



rial substances; or unless space itself be a thing: all 

 which is deep metaphysic, such as I arn just now rather 

 inclined to eschew. But, dear Hermione, how am I 

 to answer such a host of questions as you seem to 

 have raised all in a breath ? The Greeks ! Yes ; they 

 were a strange people so ingenious, so excursive, yet so 

 self-fettered ; so vague in their notions of things, yet so 

 rigidly definite in their forms of expressing them. Ex- 

 tremes met in them. In their philosophy they grovelled 

 in the dust of words and phrases, till, suddenly, out of 

 their utter confusion, a bound launched them into a new 

 sphere. There is a creature, a very humble and a very 

 troublesome one, which reminds me of the Greek mind. 

 You might know it for a good while as only a fidgety, 

 restless, and rather aggressive companion, when, behold, 

 hop ! and it is away far off, having realized at one 

 spring a new arena and a new experience. 



Hermione. Don't ! But a truce to the Greek mind 

 with its narrow pedantry and its boundless excursiveness. 

 The excursiveness was innate, the pedantry superinduced 

 the result of their perpetual rhetorical conflicts and 

 literary competitions. I have read the fifth book of 

 Euclid and something of Aristotle \ so you need not talk 

 to me on that theme. Do tell me something about these 

 atoms. I declare it has quite excited me ; 'specially be- 

 cause it seems to have something to do with the atomic 

 theory of Dalton. 



Hermogmes. Higgins, if you please. But the thing, 

 as you say, is as old as Democritus, or perhaps older ; 

 for Leucippus, Democritus's master, is said to have 



