44 SOME REMARKS ON THE 



8. If we suppose the maxim that secondary qualities are to 

 be explained by means of the primary to have been accepted 

 (either in that or in some equivalent form), or if not formally 

 accepted, at least unconsciously assumed, at a time when the 

 idea of mechanical force was as yet very imperfectly appre- 

 hended the natural result of this state of things is the forma- 

 tion of an atomic theory. For in order to individuate the 

 constitution of any given body, we could only have had recourse 

 to the configuration or motion of its parts. Gold, to return to 

 our previous example, was said to be yellow in virtue of such 

 and such a configuration of its parts; since except configuration 

 there appeared to be no disposable circumstance*, if I may so 

 speak, whereby gold was in its intimate constitution to be 

 distinguished from silver or from anything else. But this 

 configuration must be independent of the body's visible and 

 external form, since changes of the latter do not affect the 

 body's sensible qualities. Hence it must be a configuration of 

 small parts, and we are thus at once led to the primitive form 

 of the atomic theory. In this the atoms possess the primary 

 qualities of larger bodies they are of various forms and act 

 if the expression may be used by their forms, not by being 

 centres of attractive forces. Such was the atomistic system of the 

 school of Democritusf a system which we know found ro 

 little favour among the scientific reformers of the seventeenth 

 century \. As an instance of the influence it exerted, I need 

 only mention the great work of Cudworth, in which it is pre- 

 sented apart from the atheistical doctrines with which it had 

 often been connected. Cudworth goes so far as to affirm that 

 Democritus and his followers had corrupted and degraded the 

 atomistic system which was originally altogether free from any 

 irreligious tendency, and which he sought to restore to its first 

 estate. 



But as the imperfections of the atomic system became mani- 



Specific differences of motion seem for more than one reason not to have 

 been used in giving an account of the differences of bodies. 



f See for a more favourable and, I think, a juster view of the philosophy of 

 Democritus than that which we commonly meet with in the writings of modern 

 historians of philosophy, Zeller's Philosophic Der Griecken, I. 10. 



+ The physical theories of Des Cartes, though not properly atomistic, since he 

 proceeded on the hypothesis of a plenum, yet in many respects are akin to those of 

 which we are speaking. 



