ADDRESS. Ixvii 
in the world; no glory, no prosperity. The gods toss all into confusion ; 
mix every thing with its reverse, that all of us, from our ignorance and un- 
certainty, may pay them the more worship and reverence.” Now, as science 
demands the radical extirpation of caprice and the absolute reliance upon 
law in nature, there grew with the growth of scientific notions a desire and 
determination to sweep from the field of theory this mob of gods and demons, 
and to place natural phenomena on a basis more congruent with them- 
selves. 
The problem which had been previously approached from above, was now 
attacked from below; theoretic effort passed from the super- to the sub- 
sensible. It was felt that to construct the universe in idea it was necessary 
to haye some notion of its constituent parts—of what Lucretius subsequently 
called the “ First Beginnings.” Abstracting again from experience, the 
leaders of scientific speculation reached at length the pregnant doctrine of 
atoms and molecules, the latest developments of which were set forth with 
such power and clearness at the last meeting of the British Association. 
Thought no doubt had long hovered about this doctrine before it at- 
tained the precision and completeness which it assumed in the mind of 
Democritus*, a philosopher who may well for a moment arrest our attention. 
“ Few great men,” says Lange, a non-materialist, in his excellent ‘ History of 
Materialism,’ to the spirit and to the letter of which I am equally indebted, 
“have been so despitefully used by history as Democritus. In the distorted 
images sent down to us through unscientific traditions there remains of him 
almost nothing but the name of ‘the laughing philosopher,’ while figures of 
immeasurably smaller significance spread themselves out at full length before 
us.” Lange speaks of Bacon’s high appreciation of Democritus—for ample 
illustrations of which I am indebted to my excellent friend Mr. Sped- 
ding, the learned editor and biographer of Bacon. It is evident, indeed, 
that Bacon considered Democritus to be a man of weightier metal than 
either Plato or Aristotle, though their philosophy “was noised and cele- 
brated in the schools, amid the din and pomp of professors.” It was not 
they, but Genseric and Attila and the barbarians, who destroyed the atomic 
philosophy. “For at a time when all human learning had suffered ship- 
wreck, these planks of Aristotelian and Platonic philosophy, as being of a 
lighter and more inflated substance, were preserved and came down to us, 
while things more solid sank and almost passed into oblivion.” 
The son of a wealthy father, Democritus devoted the whole of his in- 
herited fortune to the culture of his mind. He travelled everywhere ; visited 
Athens when Socrates and Plato were there, but quitted the city without 
making himself known. Indeed, the dialectic strife in which Socrates so 
‘much delighted had no charm for Democritus, who held that ‘the man who 
readily contradicts and uses many words is unfit to learn any thing truly 
right.” He is said to have discovered and educated Protagoras the sophist, 
being struck as much by the manner in which he, being a hewer of wood, 
tied up his faggots as by the sagacity of his conversation. Democritus re- 
turned poor from his travels, was supported by his brother, and at length 
wrote his great work entitled ‘Diakosmos,’ which he read publicly before 
the people of his native town. He was honoured by his countrymen in 
various ways, and died serenely at a great age. 
The principles enunciated by Democritus reyeal his uncompromising anta- 
gonism to those who deduced the phenomena of nature from the eaprices of the 
* Born 460 3.c, 
e2 
