XLII PHILOSOPHICAL SOCIETY OF WASHINGTON. 
And this supposed conflict between the infinite divisibility of 
matter, mathematically considered, and the actual ihdivisibility of 
atoms, physically considered, is a pure logomachy resulting from 
what the lawyers would call a misjoinder of parties and a misjoinder 
of issues. The mathematician, contending for the infinite divisi- 
bility of matter, proceeds from the idea of space to a fact in nature, 
while the atomist, contending for the actual indivisibility of the 
atom, proceeds from an assumed fact in nature to the idea of space, 
- and so, as has been said, the duellists cross swords in the air over 
the head of a phantom standing between them, and never succeed 
in touching each other.* 
From this time onward, for many years, the opinions of philoso- 
phers concerning the nature or reality of atoms seem to have 
floated in a state of uncertainty between the views of the ancients 
and the views of Descartes. For instance, we find Henry More, 
the platonizing metaphysician of England, in the 17th century, 
adventuring the following dogmatic definition of matter: “I have 
taken the boldness to assert that matter consists of indiscerptible 
parts, understanding by indiscerptible parts particles that have, 
indeed, real extension, but so little that they cannot have less and 
be anything at all, and, therefore, cannot be actually divided. The 
parts that constitute an indiscerptible part are real, but divisible 
only intellectually, it being of the very essence of whatever is to 
have parts or extension in some measure or other, for, to take away 
all extension is to reduce a thing only to a mathematical point.” 
For the physical atom of Greek metaphysics, Leibnitz, itis known, 
substituted the monad or formal atom, considered as the continent 
and complex of an infinite number of essences. Leibnitz tells us 
that so soon as he had thrown off the yoke of Aristotle he plunged 
into the vacuum and atomic hurly-burly of Democritus, but that he 
could find no rest there, because he could not account for the gene- 
sis of mind in man on any mechanical theory of purely physical 
atoms. Hence the invention of the Leibnitzian Monadology and 
Pre-established Harmony—a form of metaphysical philosophizing 
which reflects the mental evolution and intellectual environment 
*See Westminster Review, vol. 59, p. 178, cf. Samuel Brown: Lectures 
on the Atomic Theory, Edinburgh, 1858. 
+ Quoted in Munro’s Lucretius, vol. 2, p. 158. 
. 
