44 ON THE ELEMENTARY AND CONSTITUENT 



looked. Abstruse as they are, the one or the other of them is interwoven 

 with the whole range of classical literature, and, as I have already remarked, 

 held the ascendant in the horizon of metaphysics till within the last two cen- 

 turies ; and I have dwelt upon them the rather, because, much as we still 

 hear of them, and find them adverted to in books, I am not acquainted with 

 any work whatever that gives any thing like a clear and intelligible summary 

 of their principles. Their more prominent defects are, in few words, as 

 follows : Independently of conveying very imperfect and erroneous views of 

 the creation, they equally concur in reducing matter, notwithstanding its pre- 

 tended eternal existence, to a nonentity, and confound its properties with 

 those of pure intelligence, by giving to numbers, ideas, or a mere abstract 

 notion, real form and existence. The most powerful advocate of the Pla- 

 tonic theory, in modern times, was the very excellent Bishop Berkeley ; who, 

 in the true spirit of consistency, and with a boldness that no consequences 

 could deter, openly denied the existence of a material world, and thus reduced 

 the range of actual entities from three to two, an intelligent first cause, and 

 intellectual forms or ideas, and gave the death-blow to the system by avowing- 

 its necessary result. 



In modern times, however, as I have already hinted at, the infinite divisibi- 

 lity of matter has for the most part been supported upon different grounds, and 

 philosophers have involved themselves in the same fatal consequences, _by a 

 much shorter process of reasoning. No compound or visible bodies, it is 

 well known, ever come into immediate contact with each other, or influence 

 each other by means of simple solidity. The earth is affected by the sun, 

 the moon by the earth ; the waters of the earth by the moon. Light is re- 

 flected from substances to which it directs its course, at a distance, and with- 

 out impinging upon them. The particles of all bodies deemed the most 

 solid and impermeable, are capable of approaching nearer, or receding far- 

 ther from each other, by an application of different degrees of cold or heat. 

 We can, hence, it is said, form no conception of perfect solidity ; and every 

 phenomenon in nature appears to disprove its existence. The minutest cor- 

 puscle we can operate upon is still capable of a minuter division, and the 

 parts into which it divides, possessing the common nature of the corpuscle 

 which has produced them, must necessarily, it is added, be capable of a still 

 farther division ; and as such divisions can have no assignable limit, matter 

 must necessarily and essentially be divisible to infinity. 



Such was the reasoning of Des Cartes, and of the numerous host of philo- 

 sophers who attached themselves to his theory about the middle of the seven- 

 teenth century. The argument, indeed, is highly plausible ; but it was soon 

 obvious, that, like the Grecian incorporeity of matter, it leads to a pure non- 

 entity of a material world : for that which is essentially unsolid and infi- 

 nitely divisible, must at length terminate in nothing. And hence, Leibnitz 

 attempted to amend the system, about half a century, and Boscovich, about a 

 century afterward, by contending, as indeed Zeno is supposed to have done 

 formerly, that matter has its ultimate atoms, or monads, as they were deno- 

 minated by Leibnitz, from the language of Pythagoras, beyond which it is 

 altogether indivisible ; and that these ultimate atoms or monads are simple 

 inextended points, producing, however, the phenomenon of extension, by 

 their combination, and essentially possessed of the powers of attraction and 

 repulsion. 



There is such a charm in novelty, that it often leads us captive in despite 

 of the most glaring errors, and intoxicates our judgment as fatally as the cup 

 of Circe. It is upon this ground alone we can account for the general adop- 

 tion of this new system, when first proposed in its finished state by Bosco- 

 vich, and the general belief that the Gordian knot was at length fairly united, 

 and every difficulty overcome. It required a period of some years for the 

 heated imagination to become sufficiently cool to enable mankind to see, as 

 every one sees at present, that the difiicuities chargeable upon the doctrine 

 of an infinite divisibility of matter are not touched by the present theory, and 

 remain in as full force as before its appearance. If the monads, or ultimate 



