ANNUAL ADDRESS OF THE PRESIDENT. XLI 
that time were not discussing the concourse of atoms, fortuitous or 
otherwise, but were carefully pondering, with Doctors Divine and 
Angclical, Subtile and Irrefragable, the difference between Ens and 
Essentia, between materia quomodolibet accepta and materia signata, 
between quidditas per se and hecceitas per se, between ultima entitas 
entis and ultima actualitas forme. As we plod our weary way 
through the Quodlibeta of these venerable doctors, we can but envy 
the angels one of the faculties ascribed to them by St. Thomas 
Aquinas—that of being able to pass from point to point without 
passing through intermediate spaces. 
Bacon,* as he stood at the threshold of the new dispensation of 
physical science, had made a plea for the forgotten philosophy of 
Democritus, but when the metaphysical philosophy of Europe came 
to a new Avatar in the brain of Descartes, we find that thinker 
denying a discrete conception of matter, and arguing for the con- 
trary conception of continuous extension, of the identification 
of extension with substance, and, hence, of the infinite divisi- 
bility of matter. He says: “It is easy to demonstrate that 
there cannot be atoms; that is, parts of bodies or of matter which 
are of an indivisible nature, as some philosophers have imagined, 
since, however small we may suppose these parts, inasmuch as they 
must needs have extension, we conceive that there is not one of 
them which cannot still be divided into two or more still smaller 
parts; whence it follows that it is divisible.” | It will here be seen 
that Descartes falls into a confusion of ideas with regard to the 
atoms of the ancient philosophers. They did not conceive that the 
atom was indivisible because of its smallness, but because of the 
indestructible solidity which made it incapable of being cut, or 
broken, or bent, and which also made it impervious to heat or hu- 
midity. { 
*See, especially, Cogitationes de Natura Rerum, and De Principiis atque 
Originibus, &e. Works, (Ellis & Spedding’s ed., London,) vol. III, pp. 15, 
82, et seq.; cf. Advancement of Learning, Book II, vii, 7, (Ellis & Sped- 
ding’s ed.,) vol. ITI, p. 358. 
} For a formal criticism on Democritus’ theory of atoms see Principes de 
la Philosophie, Cfuvres de Descartes, (Cousin,) tome III, p. 516, and cf. 
Aristotle: De Generatione et Corruptione, I, ii, 11-21, where this criticism is 
anticipated and surpassed. 
$‘‘ Corpora individua propter soliditatem,’’ Cic., De Fin., I, vi, 17; ef. 
Lucret., I, lines 532-5. 
