XL PHILOSOPHICAL SOCIETY OF WASHINGTON. 
far as they moved in mind, but he detested them, to use the words 
put in his mouth by Plato, so far as they moved in “air, and ether, 
and water, and such like inconsequences ;” * and, detesting them, he 
falls back upon a purely anthropomorphic conception of the Uni- 
verse—anthropomorphic because it is avowedly anthropocentric, 
with Socrates for its centre. The whole passage is a most instruct- 
ive page in comparative psychology, now that we can read it in 
the light of modern anthropological science. 
It is no part of my present purpose to carry the history of the 
Atomic Philosophy into Roman speculation. The Romans took all 
their ideas in mental, moral, and physical philosophy at second-hand 
from the Greeks.f Strong in the practical arts of war and polity, 
they were content to be in literature imitators and in philosophy 
eclectics. Equally inept for the deft metaphysical analysis of the 
Greeks and for their fine artistic synthesis, the Romans none the 
less contributed, on the practical side of life, to the definite exposi- 
tion of the contents of all the philosophical systems of the Greeks. 
Hence we could ill spare the ponderous banter of Cicero when he 
mocks at the weak points of the Atomic Philosophy, and still less 
could we spare that reasoned elaboration of its strong points which 
has made the De Rerum Natura of Lucretius the most systematic, 
the most complete, the most earnest, and the most realistic of all 
the reductions which the Atomic Philosophy has ever received. But 
after allowing for all his skill in the episodical handling of the rival 
systems of Heraclitus, Empedocles, and Anaxagoras, for his power 
of description, for the vivacity of his narrative, for the force and 
often the beauty of his illustrations and analogies, it must still be 
conceded that there is much more of original poetry than of original 
philosophy in these glowing hexameters of the Epicurean philoso- 
pher-poet. 
In a history of the Atomic Philosophy we can leap the chasm of 
the Middle Ages at a single bound. The physical philosophers of 
* Phedo, 347; Jowett’s Plato, vol. I, p. 427. 
{ For evidence as to the imbecility of the Roman mind in physical phi- 
losophy, see the 2nd Book of Cicero’s ‘‘ Prior Academics,’’ which is a long 
wail over the want of truth, or of tests of truth, in physical speculation. 
tDe Natura Deorum, I, 18, 54, 66, 69, 73, 120; ef. De Fate, I, x, xi, 
xx; De Finibus, I, vi--vii; Tuse. Disput. I, xi, 22; xviii, 42. 
