Thoughts on Causality. 



223 



ancient Greek speculation struck into the fundamental 

 idea that atoms and molecules are the ultimate constituents 

 of the cosmos. Democritus, who is pronounced a philo- 

 sopher superior to Plato or Aristotle, first gave precision 

 and form to this idea. He held to the eternity of the 

 atoms, the materiality of the soul, and denied chance. He 

 first advanced the idea of vortices in the genesis of worlds. 

 Empedocles suggested that those combinations which 

 were suited to their ends, maintain themselves from their very 

 nature, and thus launched the thought which has taken 

 form, in our own time, as the doctrine of the " survival of 

 the fittest." Epicurus, while actuated by an equal desire 

 to discover law and order in the phenomena of the universe, 

 and thus dispel the superstitions of the existing religions, 

 did not reject the belief in divine existence ; and was him- 

 self a worshipper of the gods. Lucretius, if he admitted 

 divine existence, maintained that the world shows no proof 

 of intelligent design, and that all things have been caused 

 by the shock of the atoms, while the fittest combinations 

 have persisted. He is thought to have suggested the nebu- 

 lar hypothesis to Kant. As to Socrates, Plato and Aristo- 

 tle, they imposed a yoke on the human mind which re- 

 mains, to some extent, unbroken to the present day. 



This auspicious inauguration of the advance of science 

 was arrested by the quickening of the religious feeling 

 through the introduction of Christianity, which made the 

 mistake of adopting biblical interpretation as the criterion 

 of all truth. The philosophy of Aristotle sanctioned and 

 aided the a priori methods of the schoolmen ; and, though 

 science made positive advances in Arabia, the bond of tra- 

 dition was not seriously wrenched in Europe, till the time 

 of Copernicus and Bruno. Bacon strengthened the incipi- 

 ent bias toward inductive methods ; and Descartes, though 

 setting out from a first principle, unconsciously abandoned 

 it, to present the cosmos as a pure mechauism. The full 

 establishment of monotheism was favorable to the con- 



