promulgator of the atomic theory was a man whose mind was
attracted by the subtleties of thought rather than by the
tangibilities of observation. Yet the term "laughing
philosopher," which seems to have been universally applied to
Democritus, suggests a mind not altogether withdrawn from the
world of practicalities.

So much for Democritus the man. Let us return now to his theory
of atoms. This theory, it must be confessed, made no very great
impression upon his contemporaries. It found an expositor, a
little later, in the philosopher Epicurus, and later still the
poet Lucretius gave it popular expression. But it seemed scarcely
more than the dream of a philosopher or the vagary of a poet
until the day when modern science began to penetrate the
mysteries of matter. When, finally, the researches of Dalton and
his followers had placed the atomic theory on a surer footing as
the foundation of modern chemistry, the ideas of the old laughing
philosopher of Abdera, which all along had been half derisively
remembered, were recalled with a new interest. Now it appeared
that these ideas had curiously foreshadowed nineteenth-century
knowledge. It appeared that away back in the fifth century B.C. a
man had dreamed out a conception of the ultimate nature of matter
which had waited all these centuries for corroboration. And now
the historians of philosophy became more than anxious to do
justice to the memory of Democritus.

It is possible that this effort at poetical restitution has
carried the enthusiast too far. There is, indeed, a curious
suggestiveness in the theory of Democritus; there is
philosophical allurement in his reduction of all matter to a
single element; it contains, it may be, not merely a germ of the
science of the nineteenth-century chemistry, but perhaps the
germs also of the yet undeveloped chemistry of the twentieth
century. Yet we dare suggest that in their enthusiasm for the
atomic theory of Democritus the historians of our generation have
done something less than justice to that philosopher's precursor,
Anaxagoras. And one suspects that the mere accident of a name has
been instrumental in producing this result. Democritus called his
primordial element an atom; Anaxagoras, too, conceived a
primordial element, but he called it merely a seed or thing; he
failed to christen it distinctively. Modern science adopted the
word atom and gave it universal vogue. It owed a debt of
gratitude to Democritus for supplying it the word, but it
somewhat overpaid the debt in too closely linking the new meaning
of the word with its old original one. For, let it be clearly
understood, the Daltonian atom is not precisely comparable with
the atom of Democritus. The atom, as Democritus conceived it, was
monistic; all atoms, according to this hypothesis, are of the
same substance; one atom differs from another merely in size and
shape, but not at all in quality. But the Daltonian hypothesis
conceived, and nearly all the experimental efforts of the
nineteenth century seemed to prove, that there are numerous
classes of atoms, each differing in its very essence from the
others.

As the case stands to-day the chemist deals with seventy-odd
substances, which he calls elements. Each one of these substances
is, as he conceives it, made up of elementary atoms having a
unique personality, each differing in quality from all the
others. As far as experiment has thus far safely carried us, the
atom of gold is a primordial element which remains an atom of
gold and nothing else, no matter with what other atoms it is
associated. So, too, of the atom of silver, or zinc, or
sodium--in short, of each and every one of the seventy-odd
elements. There are, indeed, as we shall see, experiments that
suggest the dissolution of the atom--that suggest, in short, that
the Daltonian atom is misnamed, being a structure that may, under
certain conditions, be broken asunder. But these experiments
have, as yet, the warrant rather of philosophy than of pure
science, and to-day we demand that the philosophy of science
shall be the handmaid of experiment.

When experiment shall have demonstrated that the Daltonian atom
is a compound, and that in truth there is but a single true atom,
which, combining with its fellows perhaps in varying numbers and
in different special relations, produces the Daltonian atoms,
then the philosophical theory of monism will have the
experimental warrant which to-day it lacks; then we shall be a
step nearer to the atom of Democritus in one direction, a step
farther away in the other. We shall be nearer, in that the
conception of Democritus was, in a sense, monistic; farther away,
in that all the atoms of Democritus, large and small alike, were
considered as permanently fixed in size. Democritus postulated
all his atoms as of the same substance, differing not at all in
quality; yet he was obliged to conceive that the varying size of
the atoms gave to them varying functions which amounted to
qualitative differences. He might claim for his largest atom the
same quality of substance as for his smallest, but so long as he
conceived that the large atoms, when adjusted together to form a
tangible substance, formed a substance different in quality from
the substance which the small atoms would make up when similarly
grouped, this concession amounts to the predication of difference
of quality between the atoms themselves. The entire question
reduces itself virtually to a quibble over the word quality, So
long as one atom conceived to be primordial and indivisible is
conceded to be of such a nature as necessarily to produce a
different impression on our senses, when grouped with its
fellows, from the impression produced by other atoms when
similarly grouped, such primordial atoms do differ among
themselves in precisely the same way for all practical purposes


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