Liicretius. 



209 



mental idea of all the philosophical systems which had five 

 as a basis, whether in Europe or the East. 



But Pythagoras was mathematical. The cube was the 

 earth, the pyramid fire, the octohedron air, the icosahedron 

 water, the dodecahedron the fifth element the same as 

 Aristotle's ether, or that of the Sankhya Philosophy. 



Anaxagoras said that the number of things remains 

 always the same. Here he had before him the continuity 

 of matter, and if not of force alone, certainly that force 

 which is inherent in matter. Besides this he considered 

 that as gold consists of an endless number of small pieces 

 of gold, so bone consists of an endless number of small 

 pieces of bone. He thus lost the idea of diversity pro- 

 ducible from a few simple bodies; he tried a theory of com- 

 bination, but made a remarkably crude one ; but a step 

 aside is sometimes useful by showing danger. 



Zeno of Elea had four elements, warm and cold, moist 

 and dry, and Empedocles gave prominence to fire. 



Zeno mentions concord and discord, which we may 

 call attraction and repulsion, and Empedocles has similar 

 ideas. 



After all these earlier notions, each one attempting to 

 make the whole out of the very few parts known roughly 

 or conceived, we come to Leucippus, who seems first to 

 have followed matter until he hunted it down to the 

 smallest conceivable point, an atom. Who can go further 

 on firm ground ? Democritus explained the theory more 

 fully. Plato was not definite on this question ; the subject 

 was extended by Epicurus ; but Lucretius is in reality the 

 great expositor of the idea of atoms as it existed among 

 the most exact thinkers up to his time. 



Lucretius has solid infrangible substances primary and 



P 



