GREEK SCIENCE IN EARLY ATTIC PERIOD 



theory was a man whose mind was attracted by the 

 subtleties of thought rather than by the tangibilities 

 of observation. Yet the term " laughing philosopher, " 

 which seems to have been universally applied to De- 

 mocritus, suggests a mind not altogether withdrawn 

 from the world of practicalities. 



So much for Democritus the man. Let us return 

 now to his theory of atoms. This theory, it must be 

 confessed, made no very great impression upon his 

 contemporaries. It found an expositor, a little later, 

 in the philosopher Epicurus, and later still the poet 

 Lucretius gave it popular expression. But it seemed 

 scarcely more than the dream of a philosopher or the 

 vagary of a poet until the day when modern science 

 began to penetrate the mysteries of matter. When, 

 finally, the researches of Dalton and his followers had 

 placed the atomic theory on a surer footing as the foun- 

 dation of modern chemistry, the ideas of the old laugh- 

 ing philosopher of Abdera, which all along had been half 

 derisively remembered, were recalled with a new inter- 

 est. Now it appeared that these ideas had curiously 

 foreshadowed nineteenth-century knowledge. It ap- 

 peared that away back in the fifth century B.C. a man 

 had dreamed out a conception of the ultimate nature 

 of matter which had waited all these centuries for cor- 

 roboration. And now the historians of philosophy be- 

 came more than anxious to do justice to the memory 

 of Democritus. 



It is possible that this effort at poetical restitution 

 has carried the enthusiast too far. There is, indeed, a 

 curious suggestiveness in the theory of Democritus; 

 there is philosophical allurement in his reduction of all 



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