120 Dr. E. J. Mills on the Atomic Theory. 



a limit ought to have been by this time detected. The conti- 

 nuity of the gaseous and liquid states furnishes a strong experi- 

 mental presumption against any kind of constitution of matter, 

 corpuscular or otherwise. The atomic conception of definite 

 proportions is therefore not only not absolutely necessary, but 

 doubly improbable. 



The law of definite proportions, indeed, is itself tinged with 

 continuity. It represents one side only of the series of bodies, 

 which includes mechanical mixtures on the one hand, definite 

 compounds on the other, and indefinite substances (like albumen) 

 as its middle term. Even should much more refined methods 

 of determining a symbolic value be discovered than we now 

 possess, the law of homology is an instant prophet of their 

 weakness ; starting with almost perfect definition, it ever points 

 to some possible transcendent complexity. 



Such is the nature of the arguments involved in ratiocination 

 upon a materialistic basis. Matter, it is asserted, must be either 

 infinitely or finitely divisible, as if either conception had ever 

 been realized by the interlocutor. What if matter do not exist 

 at all ? And if it exist, where is the proof that it and division 

 have any mutual connexion whatever ? It is these prior ques- 

 tions that chemists, as a rule, never raise, or dismiss as fruitless — 

 forgetting that in philosophy, the storehouse of the most general 

 propositions of all the sciences, they have their only court of 

 appeal. Under the impression of these convictions, I now pro- 

 ceed to give an abstract of Digby's* most able argument on 

 the nature of quantity, a subject which evidently involves the 

 atomic theory among its component questions. 



In the first place, Digby investigates the meaning tacitly or 

 otherwise assigned to the idea of quantity by the learned as well 

 as the uninstructed. " If you ask what quantity there is of 

 such a parcell of cloth, how much wood in such a piece of timber, 

 how much gold in such an ingot, how much wine in such a 

 vessel, how much time was taken up in such an action ? he that 

 is to give you an account of them measureth them by ells, by 

 feet, by inches, by pounds, by ounces, by gallons, by pints, by 

 dayes, by houres, and the like; and then telleth you how many 

 of those parts are in the whole that you enquire of . . . . Where- 

 fore, when we consider that Quantity is nothing else, but the 

 extension of a thing ; and that this extension is expressed by a 

 determinate number of lesser extensions of the same nature ; 

 (which lesser ones, are sooner and more easily apprehended then 

 greater ; because we are first acquainted and conversant with 

 such ; and our understanding graspeth, weigheth and discerneth 

 such more steadily ; and maketh an exacter judgment of then ;) 

 * On the Natvre of Bodies (1645), p. 11 et seq. 



