62 SCIENCE AND IMMORTALITY 



what process we please, by the * muscular sense,' by- 

 weight, anyhow, there it is, altogether independent 

 of us, laughing our efforts to scorn." ) 



It must be noted that there were really origin- 

 ally two atomic creeds. Both schools believed 

 in indestructible atoms, but one believed in atoms 

 all a/ike, and the other believed in a variety of 

 atoms. 



The latter school, supported by the apparently 

 invulnerable evidence of Dalton, eventually won 

 the day ; but nevertheless the Daltonian con- 

 clusions did not satisfy all thinkers. Side by side 

 with the unwavering faith of such scientists as 

 Clerk- Maxwell there was a strong spirit of scepti- 

 cism. The idea of eighty or so elemental substances 

 was repugnant to a certain intuition in the human 

 mind which demands a single primaeval " urstoff." 

 The instinct to unify — to trace back heterogeneity 

 to homogeneity, to be economical with causes — is 

 one of the strongest of intellectual instincts : we 

 see it active from Democritus to Kelvin. Even 

 as the intellect refuses to believe in numerous gods, 

 so it refuses to believe in primary complexity, and 

 affirms that the complex must originally have been 

 simple. Tkis^ most of the old Greeks realised. 

 The atoms of Leucippus, and Democritus, and 

 Lucretius were all of the same material — " solida 

 pollentia simpiicitate " — and differed merely in 



