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f. ir ih t a ,t? mists ot antiquity had experience of gravity as manifested by 
railing bodies. Abstracting from this, they permitted their atoms to fall 
eternally through empty space. Democritus assumed that the larger atoms 
moved more rapidly than the smaher ones, which they therefore could overtake, 
and with which they could combine. Epicurus, holding that empty space 
cou lei otter no resistance to motion, ascribed to all the atoms the same 
velocity ; but he seems to have overlooked the consequence that under such 
circumstances the atoms could never combine. Lucretius cut the knot by 
quitting the domain of physics altogether, and causing the atoms to move 
together by a kind of volition” * * * § 
Then it was all a baseless dream ; and the effort to get rid of 
Divine power landed them in the singular absurdity of an eternal 
ingathering of atoms towards some unknown centre of gravity, 
which must be eternally receding from the downpour ! 
Nec quisquam locus est, quo corpora quoin venere 
Ponderis amissa vi, possint stare in inani.” f 
“ Nor through the boundless void one point exists, 
Where things may rest, as if of weight deprived : 
No power it boasts to uphold ; but still recedes 
As nature prompts and opes the needed path.”— (Dr. Good.) 
It is important to notice in the above description of the Pro- 
fessor the use of the word combine , as if there were here some 
connection with the doctrines of modern chemistry. So far from 
this being the case, Lucretius expressly asserts that all things 
arise simply by the change of arrangement of his ultimate 
particles ( ‘permutato ordine solo”), “the mode but chano-ed, 
the matter still the same.” J 
Leucippus, the first propounder of the theory of atoms, 
accounted for the formation of the Universe by a difference merely 
in the magnitude and figure of his atoms. “ Owing to the 
former, there would be, he conceived, an agglomeration of the 
bulkier particles round certain centres — owing to the latter cause, 
an entanglement of them, and a consequent cohesion of the par- 
ticles thus brought together.” $ 
Through Democritus and Epicurus the notion of the com- 
bination of atoms took a further development. Space is main- 
tained to be an absolute and perfect void (inane), and the atoms || 
* Address, p. 52. 
t Lib. i. lines 107G- 77. I follow in general Dr. Good's text, but have 
corrected by Muuro (1873), who here translates “ nor is there any spot of 
such a sort that when bodies have reached it, they can lose their force of 
gravity and stand upon void, and that again which is void must not serve to 
support anything, but must, as its nature craves, continually give place ” 
% Lib. i. lines 820—828. J ° F 
§ Daubenyon the Atomic Theory, p. 12. 
|| “ Omnis ut est, igitur, per se natura duabus 
Constitit in rebus, nam corpora sunt et inane.” — L ucretttjs, lib. i. 420. 
