run HKLPAXT .1 />/>/;/ 



passed from tin- super to tin- sub-sensible.. It was felt 

 thai to construct the universe in idea, i 1 irai necessary to 

 have some notion of its constituent part- -of what 

 Lucretius subsequently called the " Kir>t Beginnings." 



jain from experience, the leaders of scientific 

 speculation reached at length the pregnant doetrine .f 

 atoms and molecules, the latest developments of which 

 were set forth with such power and clearness at the last 

 meeting of the British Association. Thought, no doubt, 

 had ion.ir hovered about this doctrine before it attained the. 

 precision and completeness which it assumed in the mind 

 of Democritus,* a philosopher who may well for a moment. 

 arrest our attention. lV\v great men," says La 

 non-materialist, in his excellent "History of Materialism," 

 to the spirit and to the letter of which I am equally 

 indebted, '* have been so despitefully used by history as 

 Democritus. In the distorted images sent down to us 

 through unscientific traditions, there remains of him 

 almost nothing but the name of ' the laughing philoso- 

 pher/ while figures of immeasurably smaller significance 

 ! themselves out at full length before us." Lange 

 speaks of Bacon's high appreciation of Democritus for 

 ample illustrations of which I am indebted to my excellent 

 friend Mr. Spedding. the learned editor and biographer 

 of Bacon. It is evident, indeed, that Bacon considered 

 I >emocritii8 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 Genseric and Attila and 

 the barbarians, who destroyed the atomic philosophy. 

 " Kor, at a time when all human learning had suffered 

 shipwreck, these planks of Aristotelian and Platonic 

 philosophy, as being of a lighter and more inflated sub- 

 stance, 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 traveled everywhere; visited Athens wln-i. 

 and Plato were there, but quitted the city without making 

 nim.-elf known. Indeed, the dialectic Strife in which 

 Socrates so much delighted, had no charm for Demoei -it us. 



Jinn 



