'////: ///:/. /'. IN / i/'/'/.'/'XS. 463 



is brain-disease; but thru the immortal reason sits .ij.an. 



ami cannot he touched h\ tin- disease, Tin- error.- of mad- 



are those of tin- instrument, not of tin- performer. 



It may be more than a mere result of education, con- 

 necting itself. probably, with the deeper mental Mructure 

 of the two men, that the idea of ( Jasscndi. ahove ennm iah-.l. 

 is substantially the same as that expired by IV 

 Clerk Maxwell, at tin- clo>e of the ver\ ahle lecture deliv- 

 ered by him at Bradford in 1873. According to both phi- 

 losophers, the atoms, if I understand aright. an- /<r>/><trl 

 ni<i('ri>iL<, which, funned one* for all by the Ktcnial, pro- 

 iluee 1>V their Sllbse(pient interaetion all the phciioineiia of 

 the material world. Thei- to be this ditTerenc'-, 



however, between Gassendi ami Maxwell. The our //</>/>/- 

 the other infers his lirst cause. In his " manu- 

 factured articles," as be calls the atoms, ProfVs>or Maxwell 

 tinds the basis of an induction, whicli enables him i- 

 philosopliic heights considered inaccessible by Kant, and 

 t take the logical step from the atoms to their Maker. 



Accepting hen- the leadership of Kant, I doubt the 

 legitimacy of Maxwell's h^ic; but it is impossible not to 

 feel the ethic glow with which his lecture concludes. 

 There is, moreover, a very noble strain of eloquence in his 

 description of the steadfastness of the atoms: "Natural 

 causes, as we know, are at work, wlm-h tend to modifv. if 

 they do not at length destroy, all the arrangements and 

 dimensions of the earth and the whole solar system. P.ut 

 though in the course of ages catastrophes have occurred 

 and may yet occur in the heavens, though ancient s\ 

 may be dissolved and new systems evolved out of their 

 ruins, the molecules out of which these systems are built 

 the foundation stones of the material universe remain 

 unbroken and unworn." 



The atomic doctrine, in whole or ill part, was entertained 

 IftOOtl, DttCartet, Hobbes, Locke. Neuton. Boxle, and 

 their successors, until the chemical law of miiiiipl- 

 portions enabled Daltott to confer upon it an entirely 

 significance. In our day there are .- from the 



theory, but it still stands linn. Loschmi.; - 

 .sir William Thomson havo sought to determine th- 

 of the atoms, or rather to ti\ the limits between which 

 their RIM lie; while the di.-eoiii.-rs of WillianiM.n and Max- 

 well delivered in Bradford in is;;; illn-trale the present 



