butes of Nous. Both he and Anaxagoras taught at Athens, but were compelled to leave it on a charge of impiety. Of far greater importance is Democritus, born at the Ionic colony of Abdera in Thrace, B.C. 460, the chief expositor of the Atomic theory, which was originated by his elder contemporary and friend, Leucippus the Eleatic. Briefly stated, their doctrine is that of Anaxagoras, minus Nous and the qualitative diversity in the seeds or atoms. They adopted the Eleatic view so far as relates to the eternal sameness of Being, applying this to the indivisible, unchangeable atoms, but they denied its unity, continuity and immobility, and they asserted that 'Not-being' (the Vacuum of their system) existed no less than 'Being,' and was no less essential as an apxý, since without it motion would be impossible. The atoms are absolutely solid and incompressible, they are without any secondary qualities, and differ only in size (and therefore in weight), in figure, position and arrangement. Though too small to be seen or felt by us, they produce all things by their combinations; and the compounds have various qualities in accordance with the differences in the constituent atoms, the mode of arrangement, and the larger or smaller amount of vacuum separating the atoms. Thus Soul, the divine element pervading the world, is a sort of fire made up of small, round, smooth atoms in continual motion, and largely mixed with vacuum. The account given by Democritus of the origin of the existing universe is that there were, to begin with, an infinite number of atoms carried downwards by their own inherent gravity at different rates in proportion to their magnitude, that thus they impinged one upon another, and gave rise to all sorts of oblique and contrary movements, out of which was generated an all-absorbing rotatory motion or vortex. Under these various movements corresponding atoms found their fitting places and became entangled and hooked together so as to form bodies. Thus the earthy and watery particles were drawn to the centre where they remained at rest, while the airy and fiery rebounded from them and rose to the circumference, forming a sort of shell between the organized world and the infinitude of unorganized atoms on the outside. There was an endless number of such worlds in various stages of growth or decay under the influx or efflux of atoms; the destruction of each world followed upon its collision with another world. The account given of the mind and its operations was as follows:-Particles of mind or soul were distributed throughout the body, and were continually escaping owing to their subtle nature, but, as they escaped, their place was taken by other particles inhaled in the breath. When breathing ceased there was nothing to recruit the living particles, and death speedily followed. Every mental impression was of the nature of touch, and was caused either by actual contact with atoms as in the case of taste and hearing, or by images thrown off from bodies external to us, and entering in through the pores. These images were a kind of film consisting of the surface atoms which were continually floating off from all bodies without any disturbance of their mutual order, and were, so to speak, a sample of the object from which they were detached. Democritus used the same word (eidwλa) for certain anthropomorphic combinations of the finest soul-atoms, which he believed to exist in the air and to be at times perceived by men. These were the Gods of the popular religion, not immortal, though longer lived than men: some were friendly, some malignant; he prayed that he might himself only meet with the former. Democritus was contrasted with Heraclitus by the ancients, as the laughing with the weeping philosopher, see Juvenal x. 28 foll. In both we find the same lofty aristocratic spirit; both stand aloof from the herd, and scan with critical eyes the follies of men; but the wisdom of the younger is characterized by shrewd common-sense and good-humoured contentment, and has nothing of that mysterious gloom which pervades the utterances of the elder. The writings of Democritus seem to have rivalled those of Aristotle in extent and variety, and in beauty of style to have been scarcely inferior to Plato. I select a few aphorisms from the Fragments, which fill about forty pages in Mullach's collection. Fr. 11, 'Men have invented for themselves the phantom, fortune, to excuse their own want of prudence'.' Fr. 17, 'The chiefest pleasures come from the contemplation of noble deeds.' Fr. 29, ‘He is a man of sense who rejoices over what he has, instead of grieving over what he has not.' Fr. 30, 'The envious man is his own enemy.' Fr. 32, ‘A life without a holiday Fr. r. 92, 'He who would is a long road without an inn. 1 "Ανθρωποι τύχης εἴδωλον ἐπλάσαντο, πρόφασιν ἰδίης ἀβουλίης. doing, whether all or none shall know it.' Fr. 107, "Those only are dear to God, who hate injustice.' Fr. 109, 'It is the motive, not the outward act, which proves a man just'.' Fr. 116, 'Sin is caused by ignorance of the better course.' Fr. 132, ‘Education is an ornament in prosperity, a refuge in adversity.' Fr. 138, 'Adversity is the only teacher of fools.' Fr. 142, 'Do not seek to know all things, or you will be ignorant of all things.' Fr. 149, 'To bear injury meekly is the part of magnanimity.' Fr. 161, 'He who loves none will be loved by none.' Fr. 245, 'He whom all fear, fears all.' Fr. 224, 'The doer of injustice is more miserable than the sufferer.' Fr. 225, 'The whole world is the fatherland of the good.' Fr. 238, 'Different men have different pleasures, but goodness and truth are reverenced alike by all. Fr. Phys. 1 and 5, "The objects of sense are not what they are supposed to be: Atoms and Void alone have real existence. There are two kinds of judgment, the genuine and the obscure: the obscure is that of sight, hearing, feeling and the rest; the genuine is distinct (aоKEкpuévn) from all of these. Truth lies at the bottom of a well (èv ẞvo).' Democritus closes the series of the pre-Socratic dogmatists, men who devoted themselves to the investigation of Nature as a whole, believing that the investigation would lead to the discovery of the truth. Between these and Socrates, the great regenerator of philosophy, is interposed the sceptical or Sophistic era. 1 Αγαθὸν οὐ τὸ μὴ ἀδικέειν, ἀλλὰ τὸ μηδὲ ἐθέλειν. 2 ̓Ανθρώποισι πᾶσι σεβαστά ἐστι τὸ ἀγαθὸν καὶ ἀληθές· ἡδὺ δὲ ἄλλο ἄλλῳ. That the latter was a natural and necessary stage in the development of Greek thought will be apparent from the following considerations: What we are told about Pythagoras and his disciples must have been more or less true of all the early philosophers. The sage, no less than the poet, believed himself the organ of a special inspiration, which, in the case of the former, revealed to him the inner truth of nature; those who were worthy to receive the revelation listened with reverence to his teaching, and rested their faith implicitly on their master's authority. But when different schools sprang up, each asserting their own doctrines with equal positiveness; when the increase of intercommunication spread the knowledge of these contradictory systems throughout the Greek-speaking world; when philosophical questions began to be popularized by poets like Euripides, and discussed in the saloons of a Pericles or an Aspasia; when Zeno's criticisms had made clear to the public, what had been an esoteric truth to the hearers of Parmenides and Heraclitus, that not merely traditional beliefs, but even the evidence of the senses was incapable of standing against the reason of the philosophers,--the result of all this was a widespread scepticism either as to the existence of objective truth altogether (Protagoras), or as to the possibility of the attainment of physical truth by man (Socrates). If we remember at the same time the incredibly rapid development in every department of life which took place in Greece and especially in Athens during the 5th century B.C.; the sense, which must have forced itself on all the more thoughtful minds, of the incompetency of the old beliefs to explain the problems of the new age which |