(X 
 
 REESE LIBRARY 
 
 OF THK 
 
 UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA. 
 Deceived APR 25 1895 > lgg . 
 
 Accessions NosL//o5~D . C/^ss A^o. .... 
 
LUCRETIUS 
 
 AND 
 
 THE ATOMIC THEORY. 
 
PUBLISHED BY 
 
 JAMES MACLEHOSE, GLASGOW. 
 
 MACMILLAN AND CO., LONDON. 
 
 London Hamilton, Adams and Co. 
 
 Cambridge, . . Macmillan and Co. 
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 Dublin, . . . W. H. Smith and Son. 
 
 MDCCCLXXV. 
 
LUCRETIUS 
 
 AND 
 
 THE ATOMIC THEORY 
 
 pp O-f- 
 
 BY 
 
 JOHN VEITCH, LL.D., 
 
 PROFESSOR OF LOGIC AND RHETORIC IN THE UNIVERSITY OF GLASGOW. 
 
 OF THE ^ 
 
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 JAMES MACLEHOSE, ST. VINCENT STREE1 1 , 
 
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 LUCRETIUS 
 
 THE ATOMIC THEORY. 
 
 THERE is a somewhat popular impression that specu- 
 lation, or abstract thought, and imagination are in- 
 compatible. Perhaps they are rarely found together 
 in remarkable exercise in the same individual ; and 
 this, while no proof of their incompatibility, is quite 
 sufficient to satisfy a popular logic. I should be very 
 sorry, indeed, to think that they are incompatible ; 
 i for I do not know any greater help to the speculative 
 power, or better corrective of vagueness in speculation, 
 than imagination. The more you can individualise 
 thought, the more clear it becomes, the less verbal, 
 the more real ; and all individualising, all embodi- 
 ment of the abstract, is an imaginative effort, and 
 often a very hard one. It is one certainly very unlike 
 
3 LUCRETIUS 
 
 that of the pseudo-artistic faculty, or rather tact, which 
 is so common in these days, and which, animated by 
 no true feeling either for nature or human character, 
 looks at impressions as capable simply of being 
 worked up into artistic shape, or made into images 
 sensuously complete. This is the abandonment of 
 thought, and the apotheosis of organism. 
 
 Of course the artistic faculty may be truly and 
 nobly inspired by impressions from without, and it 
 may love that outward world around us with a great 
 and pure love. Its exercise is then genuine, bene- 
 ficial, and elevating. Although between this side 
 of imagination and the speculative effort there is no 
 essential connection, the free love and the free pictur- 
 ing of the former are very helpful to the freshening 
 of the latter, and in keeping us alive to the fact that 
 there is a great impersonal side of things, over and 
 above our individually constructed world of notions. 
 
 So far from there being any incompatibility be- 
 tween speculation, the search for the most general or 
 universal element in our notions of things, and the 
 play of imagination alongside of this, vivid as a real 
 presence, there is, in every normal thinker, a true 
 harmony. They are, in fact, lines of a corresponding 
 
AND THE ATOMIC THEORY. 
 
 rhythm ; and we fail of the nearest and highest fruits 
 of the speculative effort, if the glimpse we get into 
 the ultimate meaning of things of Origin, Space 
 and Time, Power, Moral Law and Liberty do not 
 quicken the emotions through the imagination, and 
 purify us by awe and reverence. The very indefinite- 
 ness of the intellectual vision, even after long specu- 
 lation, is an element in its imaginative power ; it is a 
 suggestion of the limitless : and the emotions arising 
 from it find their parallel in the grandest of those in- 
 spired by the outward world, by glens whose depths 
 are revealed to us by streaks of light that pierce their 
 unfathomable shadows, or by long lines of gleaming 
 waters that carry the eye upwards athwart the moun- 
 tain height, and yet are finally folded in the mists 
 that fill their urns. 
 
 This impression of an incompatibility between the 
 intellectual and the imaginative is shown to be 
 groundless by many names in the course of abstract 
 speculation. Plato, Pascal, and others at once occur 
 to us ; but there is no more complete type in history 
 of the fusion of the two qualities than the subject of 
 this address I mean Lucretius. 
 
 The poet is supposed to have been born B.C. 99, 
 
10 LUCRETIUS 
 
 and to have died B.C. 55, at the age of 44. The DC 
 Rerum Natura of Lucretius was probably first pub- 
 lished the year after his death, in 54 B.C. If we except 
 the early and now fragmentary metrical treatises on 
 Nature of Xenophanes, Parmenides, and Empedocles 
 whom Lucretius took for his model, it is the one poem 
 of antiquity that has for its distinctive subject the 
 phenomena of nature ; and it is the one classical 
 poem which shows a greater direct interest in out- 
 ward nature than in human feeling or action. 
 
 Though dealing with nature, it is in no way di- 
 
 
 dactic, in the sense of laying down rules for the 
 
 earth's cultivation, for the practical subduing of 
 nature, after the manner of the Works and Days 
 of Hesiod, and the Georgics of Virgil. Its primary 
 interest is a speculative one. By Nature Lucretius 
 means, as did the Greeks by their <w-is, the facts 
 alike of inanimate, sentient and intelligent nature 
 as matter of scientific and reflective inquiry. Nature 
 is indeed that which exists for us, being as the 
 matter of our experience; and it was looked at by 
 those early thinkers with a fresh eye. There was little 
 pre-supposition. The question as to whether nature 
 involves a unity simply, or a dualism, was a point not 
 
AND THE ATOMIC THEORY. n 
 
 assumed or foreclosed, but left to be decided as the 
 result of investigation. 
 
 The main interest of the De Rerum Natura, thus, 
 does not depend on simple observation and the 
 description of phaenomena, or on an aesthetical con- 
 templation of them. We have tHese elements cer- 
 tainly, but they are entirely subordinate in the mind 
 of the poet to the speculative interest in the origin, 
 constitution, and permanence of the system of things 
 which is given in experience. His imaginative feeling 
 about Nature is of a very marked and intense kind ; 
 and it is inseparably connected with his ultimate 
 metaphysical doctrine of the origin of the orderly 
 world. Both the theory and the kind of feeling were 
 new to Roman poetry, and they were never repro- 
 duced in its history. 
 
 Yet, in spirit and manner of treatment, there is 
 a strong native element and Roman flavour about 
 Lucretius. The Alexandrine school of philosophy 
 and poetry was the fashionable one of his time, 
 idealistic in thought, sentimental in feeling, and 
 delighting in the polish of style and verse. But 
 Lucretius apparently would have none of it. He 
 was repelled by idealising conceptions and mere em- 
 
12 LUCRETIUS 
 
 bellishment. In his direct description of nature, 
 he is thoroughly realistic and genuine; his specu- 
 lative theory altogether throws out mind, as a 
 constitutive element ; and he preferred to frame his 
 verse after the rough model of Ennius, trusting for 
 the impressiveness of his work to its body of powerful 
 thought, and to the native vigour and sweep of his 
 imagination. We know that metre frequently modi- 
 fies thought and feeling by circumscription, that 
 as the metre is fixed, the compass of the thought 
 often falls to be shortened, and its original con- 
 scious form changed, by having to pass into the 
 definiteness of the metric mould. The somewhat 
 rough and irregular verse of Lucretius was a 
 better medium for the expression of thought that 
 sought to grasp the indefinite and infinite in things, 
 than the strictly artistic Virgilian line. Vividness 
 of finished detail, precision of outline, completeness 
 of portraiture, these are characteristic of Virgil's 
 thought and verse ; but power, space, and time 
 cannot be altogether definitely grasped. They are 
 the grounds of infinite suggestions ; the mind is 
 stirred and left working on the process of the world ; 
 and we may thus expect a style less ornate and 
 
AND THE ATOMIC THEORY. 
 
 finished, alike in diction and in structure, than that of 
 the later poet. But with all this, there is no one in t 
 the whole series of ancient Roman writers, in poetry 
 or prose, who can be placed alongside of Lucretius, 
 for the union of high speculative power, deep moral 
 earnestness, and imagination that rises to the loftiest 
 reaches of awe and grandeur. 
 
 The poem is indeed a type in the world of thought 
 of the irrepressible Roman spirit of absolute sover- 
 eignty and love of orderly rule in the world of 
 practical life and action. The speculative poet 
 wished to hold in the comprehensive grasp of his 
 conquering thought the seemingly baffling problem 
 of the rise, the nature, and the limits of the sensible 
 world, to be its master and lord by knowing the 
 secret of its birth and the uniformity of its processes. 
 He endeavoured to set it within human conception 
 from lowest earth to highest ether : just as the mili- 
 tary Caesar, typifying the self-assertion of the Roman 
 character, sought, by the absoluteness of practical 
 power and action, to be the lord of the known 
 world, to bring it to the unity of supreme control, 
 government, and law, from the Euphrates to the 
 Rhine. And the history of the supposed speculative 
 
I 4 LUCRETIUS 
 
 conquest of the universe is written in the poem of 
 Lucretius in a manner as clear, full, and rounded 
 off, as the history of the Roman conquest of the 
 world was pictured by the Lord of Fire on the pro- 
 phetic shield of ^Eneas. There is in the poet philo- 
 sopher and in the aggressive military statesman the 
 same striving for completeness, for mastery; the same 
 impatience at fragmentariness ; and there is in both 
 the same merhajrucal limitation of conception and of 
 purpose, which, though successful for the time, must 
 ultimately give way before the quiet workings of 
 deeper political, intellectual, and spiritual forces than 
 were then supposed to be possible in the nature of 
 man and things. 
 
 My limits do not allow me to show how Lucretius, 
 in dealing with the phenomena of nature, works out 
 from the beneficent aspects of it to the organically 
 agreeable, and then to the purely aesthetical. This 
 is a very interesting line of inquiry for the growth 
 of imaginative conception and feeling, but I cannot 
 trace it at present. I shall now deal with what 
 seems to me to be most distinctive in the nature- 
 feeling of the poet. This arises from the speculative 
 problem with which he grapples, and the kind of 
 
AND THE ATOMIC THEORY. 
 
 solution which he adopts ; and it consists in an 
 intense-sympathy for the grand, and especially the 
 limitless, in power, in space, and in time. He touches 
 with equal readiness and impressiveness the sublime 
 of degree, of expanse, and of duration. No classical 
 poet has done so with greater power ; no poet, ancient 
 or modern, has done so with greater frequency and 
 variety. 
 
 The problem of the first beginning and the end 
 of things, as he puts it, is : " Whether there was 
 ever a beginning of the world through a producing 
 cause, and whether there is ever to be an end of 
 it. How long the walls of the world can endure 
 the pressure of violent assaulting motion. Or 
 whether, divinely endowed with eternal security, they 
 are able to glide on in an everlasting course of 
 time, and defy the powerful forces of immeasurable 
 ages." 
 
 " Ecquaenam fuerit mundi genitalis origo, 
 Et simul ecquae sit finis, quoad moenia mundi 
 Solliciti motus hunc possint ferre laborem, 
 An divinitus aeterna donata salute 
 Perpetuo possint aevi labentia tractu 
 Inmensi validas aevi contemnere viris."* 
 
 * De Rer. Nat., V., 1212, et seq. 
 
16 LUCRETIUS 
 
 The immensity of space is ever haunting the 
 thought and imagination of the poet, and the con- 
 trast of its immeasurableness with the limitation of 
 the sensible sphere, is the spur which pushes his 
 eager inquiry outside and beyond the bounding walls 
 of the world. It is towards that unknown immensity 
 that the mind ever yearns, and into which it seeks 
 to pass " in free and unimpeded flight " : 
 
 " Quaerit enim rationem animus, cum summa loci sit 
 Infinita foris haec extra moenia mundi, 
 Quid sit ibi porro quo prospicere usque velit mens 
 Atque animi jactus liber quo pervolet ipse." * 
 
 The notion of the limitless is everywhere present 
 as th^_gj^f;rn]ritiv^ ^l^men^ the grounding idea of 
 his theory of the universe. But the infinity of time is 
 comparatively subordinate to the immensity of space, 
 for the latter is needed as the condition the room, in 
 fact for power and time to work out their results. 
 And__ihis immeasurableness of space is also the 
 frame-work of his imaginative representations. The 
 void of abstract thought becomes the vivid concrete 
 of the pictorial imagination. There is hardly a grand 
 imaginative passage in the poem in which you cannot 
 * De Rer. Nat., II., 1044, et seq. 
 
AND THE ATOMIC THEORY. 
 
 detect visual space as the ground-work, transcending 
 grasp, yet clothed and gleaming in real presence. 
 
 In many of the passages, it is the sole or the 
 emphatic element. Now space is such that the swift 
 bright thunderbolt, gliding on in luminous race 
 through infinite time, would fail to course through it, 
 or in the least lessen what remains : 
 
 " Est igitur natura loci spatiumque profundi, 
 Quod neque clara suo percurrere fulmina cursu 
 Perpetuo possint aevi labentia tractu 
 Nee prorsum facere ut restet minus ire meando." * 
 
 We have the clouds sounding over the plains of the 
 wide-spreading upper world 
 
 " Dant etiam sonitum patuli super aequora mundi." t 
 
 We have the autumn time, when the house of heaven, 
 set with glittering stars, and the whole earth are 
 shaken all around 
 
 " Autumnoque magis stellis fulgentibus apta 
 Concutitur caeli domus undique totaque tellus." | 
 
 And we have " the winds carrying the thinly scattered 
 
 * De Rer. Nat., I., 1002, et seq. f Ibid., VI., 108. 
 
 t VI., 357- 
 
 B 
 
1 8 LUCRETIUS 
 
 clouds across heaven in the night-time, and the 
 glittering signs appearing to glide athwart the rack, 
 and travelling on high in a direction different to their 
 real course" * 
 
 " Raraque per caelum cum venti nubila portant 
 Tempore nocturne, turn splendida signa videntur 
 Labier adversum nimbos atque ire superne 
 Longe aliam in partem ac vera ratione feruntur. " 
 
 We have it in the dark-blue of the great universe 
 
 " Magni per caerula mundi." t 
 The vast azure level of ocean 
 
 " Maxuma qua nunc se ponti plaga caerula tendit." 
 There is the all-illumining sun 
 
 " Sol omnia lustrans." 
 
 In that wonderfully powerful passage in which he 
 points out the influence of familiarity in abating 
 admiration, we are asked "to look up and suppose 
 we saw for the first time the clear and spotless hue 
 of heaven, and the stars which it holds within it 
 
 * De Rer. Nat., IV., 443. Mr. Munro's rendering. 
 t/^.,V.,77i. JV. 4 8i. VI., 735- 
 
AND THE ATOMIC THEORY. 19 
 
 wandering all about, and the moon, and the lustre of 
 the sun of surpassing brightness " : 
 
 " Suspicito caeli clarum pummque colorem, 
 Quaeque in se cohibet, palantia sidera passim, 
 Lunamque et soils praeclara luce nitorem." * 
 
 The power of the invocation to " Alma Venus " 
 depends mainly on expanse clothed, filled, living, and 
 the sense of hurrying movement in space : " Before 
 thee, goddess, flee the winds, the clouds of heaven ; 
 for thee earth manifold in works puts forth sweet- 
 smelling flowers ; for thee the levels of the sea do 
 laugh, and heaven propitiated shines with outspread 
 
 light The wild herds bound over the glad pastures 
 
 and swim the rapid rivers. . . . Yes, throughout seas 
 and mountains and sweeping rivers, and leafy homes 
 of birds and grassy plains, striking fond love in the 
 breasts of all, thou constrainest them each after its 
 kind to continue their races with desire." f . 
 
 " Te, dea, te fugiunt venti, te nubila caeli 
 Adventumque tuum, tibi suavis daedala tellus 
 Summittit flores, tibi rident aequora ponti, 
 Placatumque nitet diffuso lumine caelum. 
 
 * De Rer. Nat., II., 1030, et seq. 
 t Ibid., I., 6, et seq. Mr. Munro's rendering. 
 
20 LUCRETIUS 
 
 Inde ferae pecudes persultant pabula laeta 
 Et rapidos tranant amnis. 
 
 Denique per maria ac montis fluviosque rapacis 
 Frondiferasque domos avium camposque virentis 
 Omnibus incutiens blandum per pectora amorem, 
 Efficis ut cupide generatim saecla propagent." 
 
 Lucretius, naturalistic as he is, is thus among the 
 least sensuous of poets ; he is one who, for effect on 
 the imagination, depends but little on mere organic 
 feeling, whether the definitely sensational or the 
 generally agreeable, and greatlyL-on-intellectual corr- 
 ception made vivid to sense. The element of organic 
 feeling certainly enters into his picturing of nature, 
 and enters truly and impressively ; but it is not that 
 which has inspired his highest imaginative efforts.* 
 
 The principles which Lucretius lays down, and the 
 assumptions which he makes with a view to account 
 for the origin of the world, all touch the imagination 
 on the same side that of the feeling of the limitless. 
 The atom, indeed, the primordium, that ultimate 
 beyond which intelligence cannot and need not go, 
 to solve the origin of earth, sea, and heavens, is an 
 
 * For a discriminating and appreciative estimate of the genius 
 and style of Lucretius, I need hardly refer to the well-known 
 and admirable work of Professor Sellar, on The Roman Poets of 
 the Republic. 
 
AND THE ATOMIC THEORY. 2 l 
 
 absolute or indivisible minimum. It can neither be 
 generated nor dissolved in time. It is an everlasting 
 solid singular, absolutely incompressible, or without 
 internal void.* It has no sensational quality neither 
 colour, taste, smell, nor sound it is invisible. Yet it is 
 capable of motion and impact, and thus of producing 
 all our manifold sensations. In variety of shape the 
 primordia are limited, but in number of individuals in 
 each kind of shape they- are infinite.! Their motion is 
 possible through the existence of void or free unresist- 
 ing space. Atom and void are. the- ultimate grounds of 
 the universe. Nothing exists except these, and what 
 comes out of them. As space is infinite, there is no 
 centre or lowest point at which the atoms might rest 
 in position. They are for ever streaming on through 
 space on all sides, and are supplied from its un- 
 fathomable depths ; and they have been moving both 
 of themselves, by their own weight, and by mutual 
 impact through endless time. At length the first ele- 
 ments, after testing every kind of production possible 
 
 * De Rer. Nat., I., 510. 
 
 t Ibid., II., 478, 523. Mr. Tyndall, in his summary of the 
 atomic theory (Address, p. 4), makes the assertion that the 
 variety of shapes of the primordia is infinite. This was the 
 doctrine of Democritus (Laert., ix., 7, 12), but it was repudiated 
 both by Epicurus (Ibid., x., i, 24) and Lucretius. 
 
 OF THE 
 
 UNIVERSITY 
 
22 LUCRETIUS 
 
 by their mutual combinations, suddenly met together 
 in masses that were the rudiments of earth, sea, and 
 heaven, and the race of living things, very much as 
 the rude chaos of brute force the original sphere of 
 man settled at length into, civilised society, spon- 
 taneously ruled by the sense of law and order, after 
 the exhaustion of physical violence overdone in 
 assault and repression.* These rudiments "atr_a 
 strange, stormy crisis, and medley," finally righted 
 themselves and constituted the orderly world we now 
 see. The different combinations of the primordia, 
 effected through motion, constitute and explain the 
 variety of things in the sensible world. 
 
 The original state of our world would thus seem to 
 be an aggregate of atoms loosely thrown together 
 within, a definite portion or limit of space, as the 
 result of the great atomic whirl that had been going 
 on in the measureless void. Among the atoms there 
 is difference of shape, size, and weight. The weight 
 of each atom determines its downward perpendicular 
 motion through the void, and, as void is unresisting, 
 each falls with an equal velocity. Why, then, it may 
 be asked, do they not go on for ever in this downward 
 * De Rer. Nat. y V., 925, et &eq. 
 
AND THE ATOMIC THEORY. 23 
 
 direction through the infinity of space ? The answer 
 is, that swerving somehow from the parallel lines of 
 their falling paths, there is impact and rebound. The 
 lighter atoms are thus forced upwards, and form 
 ether, the highest sphere, with its great rolling fires 
 girdling the world. From other motions upwards of 
 atoms not so light as the ethereal, there arise the sun 
 and moon, whose spheres revolve in the air midway 
 between earth and ether. After these were formed, the 
 other grosser atoms coalesced and formed the earth.* 
 
 In a word, the genesis of things, as Lucretius puts 
 it, is that of the limitless yet definite atomic first 
 beginnings moving through the immeasurable void, 
 during immeasurable time, finally clothing themselves 
 with limit of sensible form, and passing into the 
 orderly world we now know. The atoms have varied 
 shapes and weights ; motion and impact after endless 
 revolutions give them definiteness of sensible form 
 and position. The rudiments of things are a syn- 
 thesis of the infinite and absolute the infinity of 
 number and motions in time, and the absolute of 
 minimum or constitution. The fixity or limit arises 
 out of a conflict between the infinite sweep of atomic 
 
 * De Rer. Nat., II., 216, et seq., 251, et seq., V., 416, et seq. 
 
24 LUCRETIUS 
 
 power, and the definite constitution of its parts or 
 atoms. The world of our experience is, as it were, 
 the unlimited and the limited conciliated in temporary 
 unity. Power, in one respect, vast, immeasurable, yet 
 mastered by itself in the progress of its evolution, 
 the limitless self-limited, the indefinite become de- 
 finite, order blossoming on chaos, this, whatever 
 be its speculative worth, is imaginatively one of the 
 grandest forms of the sublime. It is an analogue 
 of that highest of our conceptions, an absolute will, 
 conscious of itself and its powers, and yet holding 
 all within the grasp of self-mastery and self-control. 
 
 In this system, which has arisen out of mere con- 
 junction, there is, nevertheless, the presence and 
 operation of definite causes, subject to necessity of 
 law and nature, which work out perfectly definite 
 effects. Being, which begins, cannot arise from no- 
 thing. Change implies cause ; and anything cannot 
 be the cause of anything whatever : for causes have 
 special natures or powers, and thus work out special 
 results or effects.*. So far at least as the outward 
 world is concerned, the successive evolutions mani- 
 fested in it are subject to law and necessity. " In all / 
 * De Rer. Nat., I., 159, 173. 
 
AND THE ATOMIC THEORY. 2 $ 
 
 things we observe much which takes place at a fixed 
 time. Trees have a set time for blossoming, and for 
 shedding their blossoms. . . . When the first begin- 
 nings of causes have been in this way, and things have 
 thus happened from the first rise of the world, in due 
 sequence too they now recur after a definite order." 
 
 " Multa videmus enim, certo quae tempore fiunt 
 Omnibus in rebus : florescunt tempore certo 
 Arbusta et certo dimittunt tempore florem. 
 
 Namque ubi sic fuerunt causarum exordia prima, 
 Atque ita res mundi cecidere ab origine prima, 
 Conseque quoque jam redeunt ex ordine certo.'* 
 
 When we have, therefore, a cause whose operation 
 is known, we may confidently expect the particular 
 effect. The world is thus a system of order of 
 uniform, predictable occurrences. 
 
 On this point Lucretius is greatly in advance of 
 Hume; for the former thus grounds the order of 
 things on the fixity of objective conditions, as op- 
 posed to a merely common and repeated subjective 
 experience. Instead of mere conjunction stereotyped 
 in habit a simple unguaranteed constancy of im- 
 pression there is the notion of outward determining 
 * De Rer. Nat, V., 699, et seq. 
 
 x*^ 5 
 
 jr n or THE 
 
 \ 
 
 V^ 
 
26 LUCRETIUS 
 
 principle and law. The identification of physical 
 causality with antecedence and consequence, however 
 qualified by epithets, is a legacy of Hume to Brown 
 and the Mills. It has done as much as most inade- 
 quate conceptions, when set up as complete, to per- 
 vert philosophical thought. As an expression of moral 
 causality; where the agency and the consciousness of 
 it are identical, it utterly fails. Even as an expres- 
 sion of physical causality, it is incomplete. Physical 
 change can be adequately conceived only by regarding 
 the antecedent as passing or being transformed into 
 the consequent or effect, as the stored up power of 
 the gun-powder passes into the motion of the ball, or 
 the dammed up water of the still pool is transformed 
 into the actual force of the waterfall. Invariable 
 antecedence may be taken as a test of the visible or 
 phaenomenal cause, or of the cause in this aspect ; it 
 is thus a help to prediction ; but it is not an adequate 
 expression of physical causality. Physical change 
 really means transformation of force in faculty or 
 potency into act, or work, the latent passing into 
 the actual, or the actual again transforming itself into 
 the latent or potential. The explicit processes of 
 science have now confirmed and illumined the natural 
 
AND THE ATOMIC THEORY. 
 
 instinctive sense of cause or power, in regard to 
 the sensible universe. In this respect, the view of 
 Lucretius regarding a definite nature in causes, and 
 corresponding distinctive results, fits perfectly with 
 the conception of effects varying with varying classes 
 and kinds of potency of work in things. 
 
 This notion of uniform and predictable order, as 
 stated by Lucretius, was doubtless a great point 
 gained for the thought and feeling of the time. It 
 was of the highest importance to reach the idea of 
 a definite order in things, for it gave men courage 
 in a certain mastery over nature, the courage of 
 faith in the future, the conviction that that future 
 was not at the bidding of wholly capricious powers, 
 of which men knew nothing except from their sup- 
 posed effects their lawlessness, and tendency to 
 interfere through passion with the course of things. 
 There was here a firm basis for human thought and 
 human action for foresight, prudence, and manly 
 self-reliance. It was man asserting himself against 
 the supposed control of a class of invisible powers, 
 which his reflection taught him were unworthy, 
 morally and intellectually, of his better thoughts. 
 
 But what of the permanency of individual life, and 
 
28 LUCRETIUS 
 
 what of the stability of this system of our experience, 
 which has thus arisen ? 
 
 The objects of our experience the causes and 
 effects at work in the world are made up of the 
 coming together of the first bodies, the seeds of things. 
 Neither individually, nor as a whole, is the system 
 permanent, everlasting. The earth is the mother of 
 the individual objects upon it ; it is also their tomb. 
 And, as the whole system had a birth, it will pass 
 through decay to death. Individual objects are 
 constantly exposed to the wear and tear of the 
 supersensible primordia which are in perpetual aggres- 
 sive motion. So long as they are able to take from 
 the constant flow around them more than they give, 
 they live and grow ; but this has its limit. And the 
 moment the limit is reached, then they begin to 
 decay, to succumb to the attacks on " the fastnesses 
 of life," and finally to perish. The powers of pri- 
 mordial motion, which originally gave them being, 
 are really constantly assaulting that being their 
 own gift. Objects are real in so far as they have 
 limit; but whenever a thing quits its proper limit, 
 and is thus changed, say by the loss of any of its 
 constituent primordia, immediately this change of 
 
AND THE ATOMIC THEORY. 29 
 
 state is the death of that which was before. The 
 death of anything is thus the violation of the limit 
 which constitutes its unity. 
 
 " Mutat enim mundi naturam totius aetas 
 Ex alioque alius status excipere omnia debet, 
 Nee manet ulla sui similis res : omnia migrant, 
 Omnia commutat natura et vertere cogit." * 
 
 " Nam quodcumque suis mutatum finibus exit, 
 Continue hoc mors est illius quod fuit ante." t 
 
 But while this change is constantly going on, while 
 individual objects are growing only to decay and 
 perish, they are as regularly constituted in new forms. 
 The elements which forsake each thing lessen the thing 
 from which they go, and thus leave it to perish, but 
 they increase that to which they come, enable it to 
 grow, and thus constitute new beings. As the former 
 grow old, the latter come to their prime. These 
 again go through the same process of change. The 
 individual withers and dies, but only to result in a 
 new form of life.! 
 
 This ceaseless cycle of life and death is imagina- 
 tively one of the most powerful and pathetic concep- 
 * De Rer. Nat., V., 828, et seq. t Ibid., II., 753- 
 
3 o LUCRETIUS 
 
 tions of the poet. Infinite time, boundless space, are 
 fused in action and relation, and amid them emerge 
 the sensible changes of life and death. These are 
 but the pulsings of everlasting movement. " Death- 
 dealing motions cannot always keep the mastery, 
 nor entomb existence for evermore. Nor, on the 
 other hand, can the birth and increase giving motions 
 of things preserve them always after they are born. 
 Thus the war of first beginnings, waged from eternity, 
 is carried on with dubious issue : now here, now 
 there, the life-bringing elements of things get the 
 mastery, and are overmastered in turn : with the 
 funeral wail blends the cry which babies raise when 
 they enter the borders of light, and no night ever 
 followed day, or morning night, that heard not, 
 mingling with the sickly infant's cries, wailings, the 
 attendants on death and black funeral."* 
 
 And what is true of individual life holds also of 
 the whole system of things. By the aggressive blows 
 which finally destroy individual objects, "the walls 
 of the great world around shall be stormed and fall 
 to decay and crumbling ruin." We have even now 
 indications of the decay of the productive powers of 
 
 * De Rer. Nat., II., 569, et seq. Mr. Munro's rendering. 
 
AND THE ATOMIC THEORY. 
 
 the earth, of that earth which from the accumulation 
 of diverse seeds at first gave birth to " goodly crops 
 and joyous vineyards, sweet fruits and glad pas- 
 tures." That which at first produced can now but 
 imperfectly sustain. "The sorrowful planter of the 
 exhausted and shrivelled vine impeaches the march 
 of time and wearies heaven, and comprehends not 
 that all things are gradually wasting away and passing 
 to the grave, quite forspent by age and length of 
 days." * 
 
 The passage in the Fifth Book (1. 364, et seq.) in 
 which the poet expresses this view, is one of the most 
 powerful and characteristic in the poem. I have tried 
 thus to render it : 
 
 The world is not a solid unity, 
 
 Imperishable ; there is void in things ; 
 
 But not mere void ; and bodies fail not that 
 
 Perchance may rise out of infinity, 
 
 And in strong sweep of eddying whirl o'erthrow 
 
 The sum of things, or down upon it clash 
 
 Some other perilous disaster dire ; 
 
 Nor does there fail the space of deep profound, 
 
 Wherein to broad-cast ruin down may sink 
 
 The world's walls : they by other force assailed 
 
 May perish. Think not then the gate of death 
 
 De Rer. Nat., II., 1 148, et seq. Mr. Munro's rendering. 
 
32 LUCRETIUS 
 
 Is closed against the heavens, the sun, or earth, 
 Or deep flow of the sea ; it aye, with vast 
 Wide open gape, stands waiting for the world. 
 If things may die, they also had a birth, 
 For mortal frame was ne'er compact enough 
 To spurn back through infinite time till now 
 The powerful strain of ages limitless. 
 
 " At neque, uti docui, solido cum corpore mundi 
 Naturast, quoniam admixtumst in rebus inane, 
 Nee tamen est ut inane, neque autem corpora desunt, 
 Ex infinite quae possint forte coorta 
 Corruere hanc rerum violento turbine summam 
 Aut aliam quamvis cladem importare pericli, 
 Nee porro natura loci spatiumque profundi 
 Deficit, exspargi quo possint moenia mundi, 
 Aut alia quavis possunt vi pulsa perire ; 
 Haut igitur leti praeclusa est janua caelo 
 Nee soli terraeque neque altis aequoris undis 
 Sed patet immani et vasto respectat hiatu. 
 Quare etiam nativa necessumst confiteare 
 Haec eadem ; neque enim, mortali corpore quae sunt 
 Ex infinite jam tempore adhuc potuissent 
 Inmensi validas aevi contemnere vires." * 
 
 But let the present order of things its spatial and 
 temporal unity be destroyed, nothing would abso- 
 lutely perish. No object of our experience is an- 
 nihilated. The things which die are simply resolved 
 into the elements out of which they sprung into those 
 imperishable primordia beyond which dissolution can- 
 * De Rer. Nat., V., 364, et seq. 
 
AND THE ATOMIC THEORY. 33 
 
 not go, into what, in fact, is the first and last of 
 things. Had there not been this imperishableness in 
 the elements of things, infinite time would long ago 
 have been too strong for the system of the world, and 
 would have utterly swept it away. But even infinity 
 is impotent against the barrier of the absolute atomic 
 limit. While there is a sensible change in the things 
 of our experience, there is yet no absolute loss to 
 the universe. The individual withers and dies, the 
 present order is dissolved, but the grand sum of 
 existence is never lessened a jot, and its powers are 
 free to turn again towards new evolutions. 
 
 Lucretius has, in his conception of atomic transition 
 from individual to individual through the changes of 
 life and death, very closely anticipated the root idea 
 of the modern doctrine of the Transformation of 
 Energy ; as his view of the impossibility of the 
 annihilation of the primordia, and the absolute un- 
 diminishableness of the sum of matter, is explicitly 
 that of the Conservation of Matter. There is not 
 any form of being, according to him, which goes back 
 to nothing. Things when broken up return into the 
 prime constituent elements of matter. His picture 
 of transformation is most powerful, vivid, and com- 
 
34 LUCRETIUS 
 
 plete. Father Ether sends down the rains into the 
 lap of mother Earth ; goodly crops spring up, and 
 the boughs of trees put on their greenery of leafage, 
 the trees increase and bear fruit ; man and the race 
 of wild beasts are nourished ; joyous towns are pros- 
 perous with children ; and leafy forests ring through- 
 out with the new songs of birds; the cattle yield 
 milk, and their young, heart-delighted with the new 
 milk, gambol over the soft grass. 
 
 " Haud igitur redit ad nilum res ulla, sed omnes 
 Discidio redeunt in corpora material. 
 Postremo pereunt imbres, ubi eos pater aether 
 In gremium matris terrai praecipitavit ; 
 At nitidae surgunt fruges ramique viresctmt 
 Arboribus, crescunt ipsae fetuque gravantur ; 
 Hinc alitur porro nostrum genus atque ferarum, 
 Hinc laetas urbes pueris florere videmus 
 Frondiferasque novis avibus canere undique silvas ; 
 Hinc fessae pecudes pingui per pabula laeta 
 Corpora deponunt et candens lacteus umor 
 Uberibus manat distentis ; hinc nova proles 
 Artubus informis teneras lasciva'per herbas 
 Ludit lacte mero mentes perculsa novellas. 
 Haud igitur penitus pereunt quaecunque videntur, 
 Quando alid ex alio reficit natura nee ullam 
 Rem gigni patitur nisi morte adjuta aliena." * 
 
 What Lucretius put, on imperfect grounds certainly, 
 * De Rer. Nat., I., 248-264. 
 
AND THE ATOMIC THEORY. 
 
 35 
 
 in regard to the origin and end of the sensible world, 
 modern science, according to its present knowledge or 
 assumptions, generally approves. The present visible 
 or sensible system had a beginning in time ; its early, 
 if not its absolutely first stage, was the atomic ; it is 
 decaying ; it will have an end. The sun, the great 
 centre of light and heat, and of the conditions of life, 
 is not a power of ever during resource, and it is physi- 
 cally a wasteful source of energy. While it is sus- 
 taining a limited life on our globe, and it may be 
 on other planets, it is at the same time prodigally 
 dissipating its heat-energy through space, not to be 
 recalled by it for use. As its power of radiating heat 
 decreases, finally to perish, and as the earth and other 
 planets are more and more impeded in their orbital 
 motion by the resistance of the ether, the time is 
 gradually approaching when the whole planetary 
 system will collapse, and be absorbed in one effete 
 darkened mass of matter, or dissipated into energy 
 amid ethereal space. There will be disaster, ruin, 
 dissipation, without absolute destruction or annihila- 
 tion of material. Lucretius, if modern science be 
 correct, was a true prophet, though his prediction was 
 rather a forecast than a deduction. 
 
36 LUCRETIUS 
 
 Such is in outline the atomic doctrine as put by 
 Lucretius. It obviously professes to be an answer to 
 the question as to what matter, or the material world, 
 is in its ultimate reality. Through the history of 
 philosophy we can trace two views on this point 
 which have been usually regarded as antagonistic 
 to each other. There is the view of the ultimate 
 divisibility of the elementary particles of bodies, 
 attributed both to Empedocles and Anaxagoras in 
 antiquity. This doctrine may be interpreted as 
 meaning that the ultimate elements of a body are 
 entirely similar in character to the whole. Pursue 
 the analysis of any body whatever back to its primary 
 constituents, and you will find only parts in space that 
 are absolutely impenetrable that is, incapable of being 
 squeezed altogether out of space, and capable at the 
 same time of infinite divisibility, at least in thought. 
 
 But to this there has been always a counter view. 
 The ultimate elements of bodies are not absolutely 
 alike. As the compounds differ, so do the elements. 
 They vary in shape, size, and weight. Moreover, 
 they are absolutely indivisible, physically and con- 
 ceptually. They are atoms. They are everlasting, 
 imperishable, indestructible. This was generally the 
 
AND THE ATOMIC THEORY. 37 
 
 atomic view of Democritus, Epicurus, and Lucretius. 
 And it is now, with certain modifications and additions, 
 the prevailing doctrine of physicists. 
 
 The chief modification which the theory of Lu- 
 cretius has undergone in modern times is as to the 
 supposed impenetrable hardness of the atomic ele- 
 ment. For this feature of the atom is substituted 
 that of an absolute mobility, so that it cannot be 
 conceivably fixed and cloven. This is called the 
 theory of vortex-ring atoms, and matter is thus 
 ultimately supposed, as by Sir William Thomson, to 
 consist of "the rotating portions of a perfect fluid, 
 which continuously fills space." It is obvious, I think, 
 that the very terms of this hypothesis preclude our 
 accepting the vortex-ring atoms as the ultimate of 
 matter. We have as its ground the perfectly con- 
 tinuous fluid, which is space filling, and therefore 
 essentially physical ; and we have the supposed de- 
 velopment of the vortex-rings out of it. What and 
 whence is this fluid, which is before the atomic sphere ? 
 Is it not really, on this view, the ultimate in matter, 
 the vortex-ring atom being but the pen-ultimate of 
 things ? Then it seems that there are physical diffi- 
 culties connected with the origin of motion among 
 
38 LUCRETIUS 
 
 certain of the particles of a fluid of the kind described. 
 It is said that " rotation can only be produced or de- 
 stroyed in a fluid in virtue of its viscosity (or internal 
 friction), and in a perfect fluid there is nothing of the 
 kind."* 
 
 In some criticisms of the feature of the Lucretian 
 atom as of impenetrable hardness, there seems to me 
 to be a confusion between two very different notions, 
 viz., physical hardness and ultimate impenetrability. 
 Hardness is simply a form or degree of resistance to 
 pressure. An atom as absolutely hard in this sense 
 would be what is incapable of being lessened by 
 pressure in its space -filling property. But there may 
 be impenetrability, or better, incompressibility, even 
 if the atom were conceived absolutely mobile. For 
 the most mobile atom, in order to be at all, must fill 
 a certain amount of space, and it cannot possibly be 
 conceived by us as capable of being so compressed as 
 still to be and yet leave space wholly void, in other 
 words, each atom must ultimately be regarded as 
 absolutely imcompressible. 
 
 * The Unseen Universe, p. 104. The references to this work 
 have been inserted since the address was delivered. It was not 
 published at the time the address was given. 
 
AND THE ATOMIC THEORY. 
 
 39 
 
 The atomic hypothesis, as advanced by Lucretius, 
 is necessarily very weak in regard to the principles of 
 combination among the atoms. There is difference of 
 shape, of size, and of weight, and there is a downward 
 perpendicular motion attributed to weight. There is 
 further an upward motion of the lighter atoms due to 
 impact and rebound ; and this arises from a swerving 
 of the descending atoms from the parallelism of their 
 falling paths. There are also entanglements among 
 the atoms, through hooks and claws. These con- 
 ceptions are obviously simply and rudely mechanical. 
 They may be taken as at the utmost very dim fore- 
 shadowings of gravity and cohesion. The ideas of 
 polar attraction and repulsion, and of chemical affinity, 
 have no place. Atomic motion of the kind supposed 
 would give at the best only aggregates of particles. 
 Composition in any proper sense is not provided for. 
 The variety of forms and kinds of things in our 
 experience could only irrationally be regarded as 
 due to primitive conditions of being so rudely and 
 imperfectly conceived. Lucretius, indeed, seems to 
 entertain the conception of additions being made to 
 the world since its first production, from the ceaseless 
 atomic whirl going on around it on all sides, and of 
 
40 LUCRETIUS 
 
 bodies being thus added each to its appropriate class 
 or kind, as moisture to moisture, and fire to fire, 
 simply by blows.* But this is obviously attributing 
 results to a cause wholly inadequate. The ideas, 
 moreover, of class and limit of growth, or organism, 
 which is simply growth under limit, are presupposed. 
 The question regarding the conceivability of the 
 atom has been raised ; and I have seen it argued that 
 an atom as a piece of matter has necessarily length 
 and breadth, and that thus at the same time to regard 
 it as indivisible is contradictory. I confess I do not 
 set much store on argument of this sort. There are 
 two distinct senses of the term indivisible, and these 
 senses do not appear to me to be incompatible. An 
 atom, as a point in space, is no doubt quantitatively 
 divisible that is, if we conceive or image it at all, it 
 will be possibly separable in thought. But then, at the 
 same time, it may be qualitatively indivisible. In other 
 words, no possible analysis, real or conceptual, may be 
 able to get out of it anything but one homogeneous 
 unity, itself and nothing else. And it is in this latter 
 sense that the atom is properly spoken of as abso- 
 lutely indivisible. There is thus, as appears to me, no 
 
 ^> 
 * De'Rer. Nat. II., 1105, et $eq. 
 
AND THE ATOMIC THEORY. 41 
 
 real incompatibility between the doctrine of ultimate 
 divisibility and that of the atomists. The notion that 
 the ultimate elements of body are simply the abso- 
 lutely impenetrable, what cannot be squeezed out 
 of space or being, and that they are capable at the 
 same time of infinite divisibility, at least in thought, 
 is not necessarily antagonistic to the Lucretian or 
 atomic, if we take in distinctly the conception of 
 qualitative indivisibility. The ideal divisibility of any- 
 thing occupying space is always possible, but this is 
 not repugnant to the notion of the complete integrity 
 of the quality or definite nature of the thing. In 
 fact, the two notions must go together to constitute a 
 total thought of the object. 
 
 There is a further confusion of thought on this 
 point. Two questions are mixed together. Whether 
 we are able absolutely to isolate an atom from 
 everything else, from its compounds, and make 
 it an object of direct apprehension by itself, is one 
 question ; whether we are compelled to infer its exist- 
 ence from matter of observation and experience as 
 an element of what now exists, is another question. 
 We may be able to determine thejatter in the affir- 
 mative ; we may be compelled to determine the former 
 
42 LUCRETIUS 
 
 in the negative. In thinking individuals, we think 
 them as embodiments of general ideas, and therefore 
 we think the general idea in and along with them ; 
 but we cannot conceive either the individual or the 
 general idea by itself, or as anything but the con- 
 current element in a complex knowledge. Yet each 
 is needed for the thought of the other. So may the 
 thought of atomic elements be needed for the thought 
 of the compound body, when we make progress in 
 analysis of it. This really seems to be the proper 
 inference from Dalton's Law of Combination in Multi- 
 ple Proportions. Dalton found by experiment " That 
 bodies are capable of combining with one another, in 
 one proportion by weight, in twice that proportion, in 
 three times that proportion, and so on, but in no inter- 
 mediate proportion." The inferences from this were 
 that there are atoms, that the atom of each ele- 
 mentary body has a fixed weight, which differs from 
 that of the atom of any other elementary body.* 
 But these atoms are not by themselves objects of 
 sense ; they are inferred as the constituents of the 
 existing elementary bodies. We thus know them 
 simply as terms of a relation. All that the law 
 * See Professor Roscoe on The Atomic Theory, 
 
AND THE ATOMIC THEORY. 43 
 
 establishes is that atomic elements, which cannot be 
 transformed into others, yet form compounds with 
 other heterogeneous atomic elements, according to 
 certain definite conditions of combination ; and thus 
 give results different from themselves taken separ- 
 ately. 
 
 But this does not render the atoms in any case 
 themselves objects of sense or apprehension, much 
 less does it throw any light on the mode of the sup- 
 posed original combination of the elementary bodies. 
 It gives the law according to which these combine in 
 our experience, and according to which they will uni- 
 versally combine, if brought together within certain 
 limits. But as to how, supposing all atomic elements 
 to have been originally separate, they acquired such 
 collocation as to be able to combine even into the 
 elementary molecular masses, it says nothing. 
 
 Of course, I do not dispute the assumption that, 
 under certain very high degrees of heat, it would be 
 possible to reduce any hitherto unresolved elementary 
 body into its atomic elements. We might thus go 
 back to the molecule of a body, that is, to the least 
 part that is homogeneous with the whole, and this 
 molecule, if compound, might be further reduced into 
 
44 LUCRETIUS 
 
 its constituent heterogeneous atoms, as a molecule 
 of sand into silicon and oxygen, which are supposed 
 to be composed of ultimate elements or atoms. But 
 in this analysis nothing, whether molecule or atom, 
 would ever become an object of sense or direct obser- 
 vation. Nor could we so isolate the atom as to learn 
 absolutely its weight or properties. Our whole know- 
 ledge of it would still be relative ; it would be re- 
 garded as of this or that weight or property, when we 
 conceived it as ideally combined with other hetero- 
 geneous atoms.* 
 
 The question of course may be raised, looking at 
 the fact of the existence of atoms, as to whether 
 there are any grounds for supposing anything beyond 
 them. We are said to find them, or rather to be led 
 back to them, as existing and in constant motion. 
 They are, each of them, according to the modern 
 conception, endowed with a force or forces, gravitat- 
 ing, cohesive, chemical. They are, in their different 
 kinds, identical in character, in weight, and in pro- 
 perties. All over the universe this identity holds, 
 whether we analyse back to them in air, on earth, 
 
 * See a curious passage in Lucretius, De. Rer. Nat., I., 598, et 
 seq., in which he seems to approximate to this view. 
 
AND THE ATOMIC THEORY. 45 
 
 or in the other bodies of the planetary system. They 
 are definite quantities, capable of combination only 
 in definite and ascertained numerical relations. Each, 
 as it were, has been weighed and measured, ere it was 
 set afloat on the vast inane. The question arises 
 Are they eternal ? Or were they originated in time ? 
 If so, what was before them ? Were they evolved out 
 of prior atoms or elements ? Or are they the disin- 
 tegrated elements of a former system, itself the last 
 of an indefinite series ? Or were they called into 
 being by a creative ^fo// 
 
 It may be said, perhaps, that so far as science goes 
 there is no answer to such a question. Science as 
 observational, inductive, and inferential, deals with 
 the actual and the unobserved phenomenal. But as 
 the atoms are apparently the last things which it can 
 reach, even by inference from the observed, it has no 
 warrant to go further. Besides, these atoms seem to 
 baffle the notions of antecedence and evolution. They 
 are identical ; they are self-convertible. Analysed, 
 nothing comes out of them save themselves. It is no 
 help to suppose that they came from antecedent 
 selves like them. For whence, it may be asked, came 
 these ? And why do they arbitrarily change from 
 
46 LUCRETIUS 
 
 self in time to self in time ? Evolved they cannot be, 
 for evolution supposes other elements not yet com- 
 bined, which make the composite. But they are not 
 plural in elements ; they are not composite at all. 
 They are single, identical, absolute units, incapable of 
 transformation. They seem not to fall under the 
 conception of physical law. They have neither ante- 
 cedents, nor are they evolved according to natural 
 conditions. They are in truth the presuppositions of 
 natural law itself. Are we here, then, face to face 
 with the ultimate of things ? Is this, the last point 
 for human analysis, also the ultimate resting-place 
 of human thought? Is the Godhead of the universe 
 finally resolved, not into a trinity of persons, but into 
 a multiplicity of gods in the shape of the unre- 
 solvable atomic elements ? 
 
 In an able and instructive work, entitled The Un- 
 seen Universe, which has been published since this 
 address was delivered, and while it was passing 
 through the press, an attempt is made to show, on 
 principles of natural law, that the atom must have 
 an antecedent physical condition, which connects it 
 with a preceding invisible universe or sphere. This 
 attempt seems to me to be unsuccessful. The con- 
 
AND THE ATOMIC THEORY. 
 
 47 
 
 elusion aimed at may or may not be true ; but the 
 process of proof is a bad one. 
 
 The principle upon which the inferential or specu- 
 lative theory of this work is founded is called by its 
 authors the Law of Continuity. It would have been 
 well had they taken pains both to define this law and 
 to show the grounds of it. Instead of doing either of 
 these things, they treat us to an " illustration " of the 
 principle in the case of the history of Astronomy, in 
 the course of which it is shown how sensible anomalies 
 in regard to the heavenly bodies and the earth 
 disappear before increasing science ; how apparent 
 breaks in the regularity of their phaenomenal aspects 
 are found not to be real ones, and how at length the 
 whole planetary system is found to obey Kepler's 
 laws of motion, in virtue of the great principle of 
 gravity. A breach of Continuity would be exempli- 
 fied if the sun, moon, and stars were to move about in 
 strange and fantastic orbits during a day, and then 
 return to their previous places. This, apart from 
 physical disaster, would plunge the whole intelligent 
 universe into irretrievable mental confusion. The 
 production of such a state of mind is a true test of 
 a breach of this law. " Continuity does not preclude 
 
48 LUCRETIUS 
 
 the occurrence of strange, abrupt, unforeseen events 
 in the history of the universe, but only of such events 
 as must finally and for ever put to confusion the 
 intelligent beings who regard them." * We are further 
 told that a single apparent exception to the usual 
 procedure may be supposed to occur, if it be allowed 
 that this may be made use of in order to deduce from 
 it the great general law of working, which includes 
 both the usual course and the apparent exception.-)- 
 
 We might suppose from this account of the prin- 
 ciple that it is another name for that of Physical 
 Order, or the uniformity of antecedent and conse- 
 quent in experience. It is, however, more than this. 
 It implies continuous transformation of physical 
 antecedent into consequent, through all time without 
 break or direct interference by the creative power 
 of Deity. And its application by the authors of 
 The Unseen Universe involves a great deal more 
 than this principle in any form can warrant. For 
 not only does the Law of Continuity, as applied 
 by them, imply an unbroken series of conditioned and 
 conditioning in the visible or physical universe of our 
 experience, which goes back probably to a first 
 * The Unseen Universe, Art. 62-76. t Ibid., Art. 81. 
 
AND THE ATOMIC THEORY. 49 
 
 atom, or to a germ of life, and is marked by gradual 
 evolution and development in time ; but it is said 
 to warrant the position that the rise or first ap- 
 pearance of this germ is itself to be referred not 
 to an act of creation, but to a physical condition 
 previously existing in an invisible universe or super- 
 sensible sphere of being. An act of creation in 
 time, an act, as they call it, of the Unconditioned, 
 would be a break of continuity. The first atom, or 
 first germ of life both apparent breaks of continuity 
 arose out of a previous form of being, invisible 
 it may be, out of this alone, or guided by some 
 conditioned intelligence, but not from a direct act of 
 the Unconditioned, or Deity. This prime creative 
 act must be supposed to have taken place behind and 
 beyond the invisible sphere, or spheres, out of which 
 arose the primordium of the visible universe. It be- 
 longs to Eternity, not to Time. " We think it," say 
 they, " not so much the right or privilege as the 
 bounden duty of the man of science to put back the 
 direct interference of the Great First Cause the Un- 
 conditioned as far as he possibly can in time."* 
 The principle of continuity " asserts that we shall 
 * Unseen Universe, p. 132. 
 
50 LUCRETIUS 
 
 never be carried on from the conditioned to the Un- 
 conditioned, but only from one order of the fully 
 conditioned to another." * 
 
 Then, looking to the continuous course of the 
 visible or experienced universe, apparent breaches of 
 continuity, such as the events in the life of Christ, 
 the first appearance of life on the globe, and the 
 production of man, are not real ones. Their seem- 
 ing to be so arises from our limited view of what the 
 universe is, or in supposing the visible universe to be 
 the whole. In the sphere of Matter and Energy, and 
 in that of Life, the principle of continuity precludes 
 separate creations, that is, passing from the con- 
 ditioned to the unconditioned. There is an invisible 
 universe bordering this visible, as there is an invisible 
 universe grounding it, and miracle and life and mind 
 are simply a passing of the energy of this invisible 
 sphere into the visible. The law of continuity further 
 demands that this visible universe shall not be de- 
 stroyed or annihilated. It will, no doubt, perish in 
 time. The whole planetary system will pass into one 
 homogeneous effete mass, or, more probably, its 
 energy will be dissipated amid the ether of space ; 
 * Unseen Universe, p. 188. 
 
AND THE ATOMIC THEORY. 
 
 but this will not be annihilation, only a simple ab- 
 sorption of the visible in the invisible or supersensible 
 universe. 
 
 Now, I think it is perfectly obvious that no experi- 
 ence of ours can warrant a principle of such extensive 
 application as this is supposed to be. We may find 
 in our experience the most constant uniformity of 
 antecedent and consequent, of condition and con- 
 ditioned, and we may thus be entitled to infer for 
 the future that this uniformity will subsist in time, 
 as it has subsisted in time. We may even find in 
 experience that condition means a material ante- 
 cedent, using this phrase in the widest sense as a 
 form either of mass or of energy, and that the con- 
 ditioned is really always transformed energy, the 
 potential energy passing into the actual, or the 
 actual being transmuted in various ways. But any 
 generalisation of this sort would apply only to appa- 
 rent beginning and succession of things in time, that 
 is, to phenomenal sequence. We can expect, with 
 a high degree of probability, that, given antecedents 
 or conditions similar to those which we have ob- 
 served, we shall experience similar conditionates or 
 
52 LUCRETIUS 
 
 consequents in the as yet unobserved ; but this is 
 simply the unobserved phenomenal world, the world 
 of succession in time. In other words, if the world 
 lasts, our experience will be so and so. That is all 
 we are entitled to say. But as to whether and how 
 the world began, whether and how atom arose, the 
 most complete sense of continuity in our experience 
 will never enlighten us. It cannot assure us that the 
 atom arose out of a previous antecedent or condition 
 in time, for the simple reason that it cannot, in the 
 first case, tell us whether the atom had a beginning in 
 time or not. If the atom has always been, if it has 
 never been generated at all, there is no need of sup- 
 posing an antecedent or condition of it in an invisible 
 sphere. And the fact that we in our experience find 
 antecedents uniformly passing into consequents, find 
 things that apparently begin in time working in a 
 uniform way, can never assure us that things or 
 atoms about which we do not per se, or by direct 
 experience, know whether they began to be or not, 
 are related to a previous determining antecedent 
 or condition. Besides, the principle of continuity 
 supposes a transmutation of antecedent into conse- 
 quent, or condition into conditioned. Can the atom, 
 
AND THE ATOMIC THEORY. 53 
 
 which is incapable of being transformed into any- 
 thing but itself, that is, of being transformed at all, 
 be supposed as itself a stage in the process of con- 
 tinuity, which means constant transmutation of ante- 
 cedent into consequent ? Out of what sort of material 
 antecedent could that come which cannot be trans- 
 formed into a different material or consequent, which, 
 in fact, defies in itself all possibility of change ? We 
 are here obviously at the very ground of physical law, 
 at a point where the conception of it disappears in 
 conditions necessary to, yet alien from, itself. I do 
 not, of course, maintain that the atom is eternal, but 
 I do maintain that the so-called Principle of Con- 
 tinuity, as thus grounded and applied, is utterly im- 
 potent to tell us that it is not, or that it must have 
 had its origin in a conditioned invisible universe, or, 
 indeed, to tell us anything whatever about its origin. 
 
 Nor is it manifest how the so-called Law of Con- 
 tinuity can guarantee to us the continuance of the 
 visible universe in some form of matter or transformed 
 energy. The law only postulates that no break shall 
 take place in physical development in time, in the 
 transformation of one kind of force into another. But 
 this, even if admitted, cannot guarantee that the 
 
54 LUCRETIUS 
 
 material, the matter or energy, of the world will 
 subsist in a future sphere and under different circum- 
 stances. The fact that this material observes a certain 
 order of transmutation in our experience, does not 
 guarantee anything regarding the indestructibility of 
 the sum of it, after our experience has ceased after, 
 in a word, the collapse of the present order of things. 
 We are not able probably to conceive uncaused com- 
 mencement, or absolute termination of being, but this 
 inability assuredly does not arise from the so-called 
 law of continuity. 
 
 The true state of the case is that we have experi- 
 ence of the transmutation in several instances of one 
 form of energy into another, where none is lost, but is 
 known to be re-transmutable. We have at the same 
 time the transmutation of various forms of energy 
 into another, viz., heat, where, in most, if not in all 
 cases, a portion of the original is lost or dissipated, 
 and is not re-transmutable. We thus do not know, 
 and cannot affirm, from experience, that in this case 
 no energy is absolutely lost. Apparently, or phae- 
 nomenally, when energy takes the form of heat, some 
 part of it disappears. We cannot of course say that 
 this portion has absolutely passed out of being, be- 
 
AND THE ATOMIC THEORY. 
 
 55 
 
 cause it is no longer sensible. But then we are no 
 more entitled to assert, on the other hand, simply 
 from our experience of the other forms of continuity, 
 that it is not absolutely lost. We have continuity, or 
 continuous transmutation of energies ; we are also 
 ignorant of the ultimate fate of one of the most 
 constant and persistent forms of it in fact, of the 
 apparently ultimate form of all energy of motion. 
 We, therefore, cannot positively or dogmatically assert, 
 on an experience of this sort, the absolute continuance 
 of the sum of energy in the universe. We can only 
 say, the moment energy finally ceases to be sensible, 
 that we do not know whether it perishes or not. 
 
 The truth is that the Principle or Law of Con- 
 tinuity has not been analysed by the writer or writers 
 who employ it, and it is not properly grounded by 
 them, either on experience or on any higher source of 
 knowledge. As applied by them, it involves the 
 notions of causality, physical order, and transforma- 
 tion of energy. But until it is more definitely grasped, 
 and more thoroughly based, it can yield no definite 
 conclusion regarding the origin 'or end of things. 
 With the wide extension they give it, it is at the best 
 but an unproved hypothesis. And the facts, as stated 
 
56 LUCRETIUS 
 
 even by its upholders, are rather against than for it. 
 They admit an apparent and unsolved break of con- 
 tinuity in the rise of the visible world in time, in the 
 first appearance of life on our globe, and in the pro- 
 duction of man. If there be these, and possibly, as is 
 admitted, other utterly insoluble breaks of continuity 
 in the series of conditionings of the visible universe, in 
 what sense and with what propriety can this so-called 
 principle be laid down as a law of things ? 
 
 The only reply we find to this is that the principle 
 of continuity is saved by pushing back the action of 
 the Unconditioned, as they term Deity, to a point or 
 sphere above Time, named Eternity, and postulating 
 a grounding and surrounding invisible universe related 
 to this visible sphere. This invisible universe trans- 
 fers peculiar forms of energy into the visible world, 
 through the action of conditioned intelligence living 
 in it In this way they would explain miraculous 
 events in accordance with the law of continuity, and 
 also the appearance of life and mind on the globe. It 
 seems to me that these, as admittedly special effects, 
 or effects that cannot be read as forms of transmuted 
 energy, that is, energy transmuted in the line of phy- 
 sical causation, equally constitute a breach of the Law 
 
AND THE ATOMIC THEORY. 57 
 
 of Continuity, whether we refer them to the action 
 of supersensible intelligence subordinate to Deity, 
 or directly to Deity himself. The breach of con- 
 tinuity in such cases consists in the fact, admitted 
 by the writers, that neither miracle, life, nor mind 
 can arise as a transformed state of energy, or be 
 regarded as things occurring naturally in the 
 flow of physical causality, be the cause matter or 
 energy. 
 
 We have seen that along with the existence of the 
 atom there is assumed its motion, motion in space. 
 And it is supposed that the atoms of bodies solid, 
 liquid, gaseous are always in motion in varying 
 degrees. Now, the question may be asked Whence 
 is this motion of these atoms originally ? Each is a 
 " potential force." Is this a force that may pass into 
 motion, or is it a force that must pass into motion ? 
 A potential force means, I suppose, a power or a 
 capacity of exercising force say motion, or of being 
 transformed into motion. Is a power of force a 
 power that sua sponte passes into motion ? a motion 
 self-originated ? tending from one point of space to 
 another? Or is it a capacity of movement, so that 
 when the atom comes within the sphere of the 
 
 {TJNIVERSITY) 
 
 x^ OF _s 
 
58 LUCRETIUS 
 
 attraction of another atom, these two atoms move 
 towards each other ? Each atom occupies a definite 
 point or part in space. Is it originally fixed there ? 
 Or had it never at any time anything but a passing 
 movement from point to point in space ? If so, 
 was this movement because of primary self-deter- 
 mining impulse, or did it arise either from the mutual 
 attraction or mutual repulsion of a plurality, a crowd 
 of existing atoms ? Before we can decide the question 
 as to the absolutely primal character of atoms, we 
 must decide these questions. For actual motion is no 
 necessary part of our conception of indivisible points 
 endowed with force existing in space. At any rate, 
 as yet, with such suppositions, we have obviously 
 the vaguest possible chances of the direction, and 
 almost an absolute contingency in respect of definite 
 ends or termination, of movements. How can 
 definite form of blade of grass, or leaf of tree, or 
 bloom of flower, be conceived of rationally as arising 
 simply out of such indefinite contingencies ? 
 
 We hear a good deal in these days of the phrases 
 "potential energy" and "kinetic energy." They, 
 no doubt, indicate an advance in precision of scien- 
 tific conceptions ; and the departments of science 
 
AND THE ATOMIC THEORY. 59 
 
 grounded on them are characterised by a correspond- 
 ingly greater degree of clearness, distinctness, and 
 symmetry. Energy is a power of doing work, either 
 stored up, as in a body lifted from the ground, 
 or in actual exercise, as in the motion of the ball 
 sent from the cannon. "There are thus," we are 
 told, "two forms of energy which change into one 
 another, the one due to actual motion, and the other 
 to position ; the former of these is generally called 
 kinetic, and the latter potential energy." * 
 
 Such a use of the phrase " potential energy," shows 
 how far modern scientific nomenclature has departed 
 from Greek, and from historical accuracy of expres- 
 sion. The Aristotelic evepyeia is, as is well known, 
 act, the realisation or manifestation of Swaps. It is 
 only vulgar usage which has made it convertible with 
 power or force. Strictly speaking, "potential energy" 
 is a contradiction in terms. The power of doing act, 
 work, or passing into motion, is of course a potence, 
 potentiality or Swa/xis. To join the adjective potential 
 to energy, is really to speak of what is done or doing 
 as not yet done or doing. 
 
 The Aristotelic ej/e/>yeia, energy, is, besides, a 
 * The Unseen Universe, p. 76. 
 
60 LUCRETIUS 
 
 better word for what is now narrowly called kinetic 
 energy. The use of this phrase seems to contem- 
 plate power in motion motion in space, as from 
 point to outer point, or from point to surrounding 
 points. This motion may be visible or invisible. 
 It may be of what has weight or is weightless. 
 Still, there is always supposed the element of 
 motion. But the act of stored power is greatly 
 wider than motion in any form. The power of 
 thought, or, if you choose, the brain-power, may be 
 regarded as a power in store ; but it would be ex- 
 ceedingly inaccurate to identify the outgoing or 
 exercise of thought with the phrase " kinetic energy," 
 for, though in thinking there is the transformation of 
 power into act or work, the work is a form, not of 
 motion, but of change or modification, which perfects 
 the being of the mind or thinking power. The act of 
 thought cannot be properly classed under any form 
 of spatial motion, whether from point to point 
 simply, or as radiating from a centre to surrounding 
 points, whether rectilinear, oscillatory, or vibratory. 
 Displacement of motion of the particles of the brain 
 may accompany the act of thinking ; they are accom- 
 paniments merely, such as might fall under the cog- 
 
AND THE ATOMIC THEORY. 6 1 
 
 nizance of sight or touch. The act of thought belongs 
 to a totally different sphere. Further, there is no 
 change of the nature of the mind in the exercise of 
 thought in the realisation of the power nothing 
 equivalent to transmutation, as in physical causality. 
 Aristotle saw this long ago. He allowed dAAo6Wis, 
 transmutation, in physical sequences ; he properly 
 denied that it extended to mind.* 
 
 * The conceptions indicated by Swa/us and eve/oyeia ground 
 the whole philosophy of Aristotle. He shows himself well aware 
 of the difficulties connected with the very notion of primary 
 organic development, and ascribes the impulse to a kind of 
 indwelling soul or mind ; ifv\if ecrnv cvreAe^eta *rj TT/OWTJ; 
 awpxTos <j>va-LKov 8vvd(j,et forjv e'xoyros. (De Anima^ II.j i.) 
 " The vital principle is the first form of a natural body having 
 life in potence " that is, capable of realising life. His whole views 
 on this point are immensely in advance of certain current physical 
 conceptions. Trendelenburg, in his learned note on this chapter, 
 fully explains Suva/us, evreAexeia, and e'vepyeta. Auva/us is 
 " rei facultas, quatenus ipsis rei conditionibus continetur ; 
 IvreAexeta has conditiones, hanc rei facultatem ad ipsius rei 
 veritatem extollit, ut e Svva/zei nascatur et SvvajMV quasi con- 
 summet et absolvat. Again, evTeAex*"* and eVe/oyeta are thus 
 distinguished : "cvepyeia, magis ipsum rei actum, cvreAcxcia 
 statum ex actu exortum significat : evepyeia in ipsa adhuc actione 
 versatur, evreX^eua contra ex actione in statu quodam acquievit, 
 ut evTeAex ia aliquanto ulterius processerit quam Ivepyeta." 
 The transition from the Swa/us to the eve/oya is a species of 
 motion, K/V^O-IS; and fuV^o-is with Aristotle is so wide as to 
 embrace the transition from one notion to another that is, a 
 kind of thought. The first entelechy of the universe would thus 
 necessarily be thought or mind in some form. 
 
62 LUCRETIUS 
 
 But, apart from propriety of terminology, the dis- 
 tinction of potential and kinetic energy has a definite 
 bearing on the present discussion. Potential energy 
 is, in plain words, power in store for use or work, as 
 the unlit gunpowder in the loaded cannon, as the 
 power in the bent bow, or in the wound-up watch. 
 The atoms or ultimate elements of matter, if they are 
 to be of any use at all in approaching combination, 
 must at least be supposed to be endowed with po- 
 tential energy of some sort. Whether originally this 
 
 was simply the energy of gravitation-attraction, or 
 
 * 
 
 whether they possessed chemical affinity and other 
 higher kinds of attraction is not made clear. If they 
 had only gravitation-attraction, we have the diffi- 
 culty of discovering how on this basis the other 
 and higher attractive powers arose. But, be this as 
 it may, the serious difficulties lie beyond these points. 
 Do these elementary particles, supposed to be en- 
 dowed with potential energy of some sort, pass into 
 motion sua sponte? Then there is no reason why, 
 from the first moment of their existence, or during all 
 eternity, if they be eternal, they should not have 
 been in motion. If the spring of motion be in the 
 atom per se, it need not wait for a time and outward 
 
AND THE ATOMIC THEORY. 63 
 
 circumstances to develope itself. But, in this case, 
 the energy could never have been potential at all 
 it would always be motion, visible or molecular. 
 The whole notion of potential energy is swept away, 
 and in its place we have a perpetual kinetic energy, 
 in other words, we have the gratuitous supposition 
 of eternal movement. 
 
 But, to take the other alternative, Does the out- 
 going of the potential energy depend, as the very 
 conception of it requires, on conditions external to 
 itself ? Is it a mutual attraction of particles endowed 
 with potential energy ? Then, what are the outward 
 circumstances which have brought them into such 
 proximity that the mutual attraction takes place ? 
 Where is the hand that set them in the sphere in 
 which their possible energies came into play, or are 
 made really available for work? The mere con- 
 ception of the potential energy does not at all in- 
 volve this actuality or realisation. There is wood 
 and wood in the forest, and here the potential energy 
 is such that rub them together and you will get 
 heat and flame ; but the great want is the hand to 
 produce the friction. Transformation of potential 
 energy into actual is no doubt the law of this uni- 
 
64 LUCRETIUS 
 
 verse ; but the conditions of the transformation to 
 say nothing meanwhile of the mode or direction 
 form the difficulty for atomic development. Either 
 these conditions are to be found in contingent circum- 
 stances, which leaves the whole work to irrational 
 chance, or they are to be sought in some form of 
 intelligent power, which supersedes the exclusiveness 
 of the atomic theory. 
 
 This bears very directly on the strictly ontological 
 question as to whether there "is anything in the sup- 
 posed action of the crystalline and chemical laws, 
 which seems to point to a contemporaneous or co- 
 existing invisible power. In other words, are the 
 atoms, with their supposed or real powers of mutual 
 attraction and combination, sufficient of themselves 
 to account for the synthesis of bodies, which we find 
 has actually taken place in experience ? 
 
 We know that cohesive and chemical combinations 
 depend for their possibility on the relative nearness 
 of the elements. Atoms are supposed to be endowed 
 with polar forces one pole attractive, the other re- 
 pulsive. But neither attraction nor repulsion acts 
 beyond a certain point in space on other elements. 
 The forces of Cohesion and Chemical Affinity, which 
 
AND THE ATOMIC THEORY. 65 
 
 regulate the coming together of the particles that make 
 up individual bodies, are pre-eminently forces that work 
 only when the particles are near. Neither the cohesion 
 of similar molecules in one body, nor the fusing power 
 of chemical affinity which joins atoms of different kinds 
 in a new form, as carbon and oxygen in carbonic acid, is 
 possible unless the particles have acquired a position 
 of proximity.* In order, therefore, to any synthesis 
 of elements, these must co-exist within certain mutual 
 limits of space. Is this possibility of co-existence 
 to be taken as the new sphere of contingency in 
 the atomic theory? Or is it to be regarded as a 
 collocation imposed upon the atomic elements ab 
 extra ? 
 
 But, further, supposing force to produce or pass 
 into motion and synthesis of elements, as in crystal- 
 line structure, and supposing chemical forces to effect 
 combination of atoms so as to form wholly new com- 
 pounds, unlike either of the original elements, we 
 have another important step before us ere we can get 
 any complex structure, say plant or tree. For every 
 
 * On this point see Mr. Balfour Stewart's treatise on The 
 Conservation of Energy, Art. 68-71. It would be difficult to find 
 a better specimen of lucid and well-developed exposition of 
 physical conceptions than this volume. 
 
66 LUCRETIUS 
 
 definite form constructed depends only ultimately on 
 the mere force or motion of its elements. It de- 
 pends proximately and characteristically on the 
 mode, direction, or determination of the molecular 
 motions.* The absolute variety, as well as definite- 
 ness of organic form, depends on the direction of the 
 motion, and on direction limited and completed in a 
 unity. Ere the plant arises in the symmetry of its 
 perfect beauty, each molecule must take a definite 
 direction and path, it must fall into fitness with its 
 neighbour, and all must submit to a final limitation ; 
 otherwise there would be no definitude of leaf or 
 flower, no individuality of plant or tree. But this is 
 not at all implied in the fact that there are molecules 
 mutually attractive, or primary forces capable of 
 passing into motion in any direction whatever, or as 
 another force lies. This is force working in subordi- 
 nation to an end, the possibly varying in space 
 working steadily to a purpose, and if it be incapable 
 of the purpose in itself, there is some power of idea 
 animated by Intelligence, dominating in and regu- 
 lating the process. The truth is that people have 
 
 * See an able discussion on What Determines Molecular 
 Motion ? by Mr. James Croll. 
 
AND THE ATOMIC THEORY. 67 
 
 supposed that they were constructing an atomic 
 theory of the world, when they were really dealing 
 only with atoms in the abstract, fixing their weight, 
 quantity, shape, as things to be considered in certain 
 mutual relations, without raising any question as to how 
 they got combined. The chemist may do this in his 
 laboratory, with great advantage. He may even go 
 on artificially constructing inorganic bodies. But the 
 difficulties of the atomic theory of the world are sub- 
 sequent to all this ; they lie not in the question of the 
 properties of atoms, but in their modes of motion, 
 direction of motion, and mutually adjusted move- 
 ments in a definite place and time. 
 
 The difficulties of the atomic theory in this direc- 
 tion are greatly increased, as we contemplate the 
 very varied forms of structure, or organism, whether 
 animated by life or sensation. It is stated with 
 confidence by Mr. Huxley that the lifeless ele- 
 ments of the protoplasm carbon, hydrogen, nitro- 
 gen, oxygen are the same for all organisms, for 
 the fungus, the oak, the worm, and the man. He 
 has admitted that life has not yet in our experience 
 been produced from the synthesis of these elements, 
 while he inclines to the view that somehow in the 
 
68 LUCRETIUS 
 
 indefinite past it did so arise. But even suppose this 
 preliminary difficulty to be got over, there are greater 
 beyond for the theory of linear development. If the 
 basis of life be absolutely uniform, whence the im- 
 mense variety of structural form whence the abso- 
 lute differentiation? Is this a thing we can conceive 
 apart from idea embodied ? And where is the im- 
 pellent power, or Swa/us? To point out the mode 
 of differentiation is no answer to this question, any 
 more than to describe the orbital movements of the 
 planets is identical with a theory of the cause of 
 gravitation. And so long as we keep merely by 
 the absolute uniformity of material basis, we are 
 utterly helpless to make the variety of development 
 intelligible. 
 
 The differentiation of form points undoubtedly to 
 a concause, alongside, so to speak, of the* mere in- 
 organic protoplastic material. It matters little how 
 this concause is described ; it is at least proximately 
 something in the shape of life superinduced upon the 
 mere material basis. It is very difficult, if not im- 
 possible, to expound the relation of life to the in- 
 organic elements, and its mode of action upon them. 
 This power has been described by a writer of note as 
 
AND THE ATOMIC THEORY. 
 
 6 9 
 
 " that by which matter is set free from the dominion 
 of its more primitive affinities, and lifted up above its 
 former state of being," and " as the play of affinities 
 which cannot act but to resist and subdue the in- 
 organic affinities ; which cannot erect their own pecu- 
 liar superstructures, according to their own specific 
 economy, without overcoming and demolishing at 
 every step the affinities and structures of mere mole- 
 cular-force work." If this be so, we have an exem- 
 plification of the great primal law of the universe 
 the absorption and uplifting of a lower sphere of 
 existence into a higher, through disintegration and 
 death of its earlier being, in virtue of a power, a 
 living power, which is unborn as it is undying, but 
 not certainly in the purely sensuous mode of mere 
 linear sequence. 
 
 Mr. Tyndall has told us, speaking of current views 
 on this point, that certain authorities "admit their 
 inability to point to any satisfactory experimental 
 proof that life can be developed save from demon- 
 strable antecedent life. As already indicated, they 
 draw the line from the highest organisms through 
 lower ones down to the lowest, and it is the prolonga- 
 tion of this line by the intellect beyond the range of 
 
70 LUCRETIUS 
 
 the senses that leads them to the conclusion which 
 Bruno so boldly enunciated." * Bruno, we are told 
 in a note, was a " Pantheist," not an " Atheist " or a 
 " Materialist." Bruno's conclusion is that matter is 
 not " that mere empty capacity which philosophers 
 have pictured her to be, but the universal mother who 
 brings forth all things as the fruit of her own womb." 
 " Believing, as I do," Mr. Tyndall goes on, " in the 
 Continuity of Nature, I cannot stop abruptly where 
 our microscopes cease to be of use. Here the vision 
 of the mind authoritatively supplements the vision of 
 the eye. By an intellectual necessity I cross the 
 boundary of the experimental evidence, and discern 
 in that Matter which we, in our ignorance of its latent 
 powers, and notwithstanding our professed reverence 
 for its Creator, have hitherto covered with opprobrium, 
 the promise and potency of all terrestrial life." f 
 " The whole process of evolution," says Mr. Tyndall, 
 interpreting Mr. Herbert Spencer, "is the manifesta- 
 tion of a power absolutely inscrutable to the intellect 
 of man. . . . Considered fundamentally, it is by the 
 operation of an insoluble mystery that life on earth is 
 evolved, species differentiated, and mind unfolded 
 * Address, p. 56. t Ibid., p. 55. 
 
AND THE ATOMIC THEORY. 
 
 from their pre-potent elements in the immeasurable 
 past." * 
 
 NoWj I say the two positions involved in these state- 
 ments are not consistent. They can be held only by 
 one who has not sufficiently realised the meaning of 
 each. If there be an "intellectual necessity" which 
 leads us back beyond the lowest organism to its source, 
 to the rise of its life, the whole process should be 
 perfectly clear. If the intellect can prolong contin- 
 uity backwards into this region, the mystery of life 
 is solved. It is because it cannot, that a mystery there 
 is. It is quite impossible to hold intelligently along 
 with this that the whole process of evolution is the 
 manifestation of a power absolutely inscrutable to the 
 intellect of man, or that, " considered fundamentally, 
 it is by the operation of an insoluble mystery that 
 life on earth is evolved." Mr. Tyndall must make up 
 his mind either to adopt the one position or the other. 
 Both he cannot hold by. An intellectual necessity, 
 however originated, is the clearest of truths. 
 
 But what is the nature, may I ask, of " the prolon- 
 gation of this line by the intellect beyond the range 
 of the senses," that leads to the conclusion of the 
 * Address, p. 57-58. 
 
 X7NIVERSITY 
 
72 LUCRETIUS 
 
 potency of that thing called matter to evolve from 
 itself life and mind ? It is called apparently in one 
 place " the Continuity of Nature." But it is not 
 merely an experienced continuity ; it is a continuity, 
 if one at all, that stretches above and beyond ex- 
 perience. It transcends the vision of the eye and the 
 inspection of the microscope. It is by " an intel- 
 lectual necessity" that the boundary of the experi- 
 mental evidence is crossed, and we reach in matter 
 the promise and the potency of all terrestrial life. 
 Now, there is a lack of analysis here, and of clear and 
 definite thinking. The continuity of nature, as 
 given in our experience, is one thing, an intellectual 
 necessity is another. At least, it is not necessarily 
 identical with a generalisation from experience. We 
 have intellectual necessities that ground the very 
 possibility of our experience itself. Is the so-called 
 necessity in the case before us of this sort, or is it 
 simply a derivation from experience ? We should 
 have some definite statement as to the character and 
 origin of this necessity, and then we shall be able to 
 know something of the extent of its application. 
 Experience of the continuity of nature may, of 
 course, be supposed, as by some thinkers, to generate 
 
AND THE ATOMIC THEORY. 
 
 73 
 
 an intellectual necessity ; but, at the utmost, this 
 necessity of knowledge or belief would not legiti- 
 mately extend to a point before the commencement 
 of the system whose continuity only we know. If 
 the course of things now and here, as far as we 
 observe and legitimately infer regarding the unob- 
 served, be continuous, and if we are even necessitated 
 by experience to think it so, it does not follow that 
 there never was an origin or rise of the elements of 
 the system, except out of other material or similar 
 elements. This is simply an off-hand transfer 
 of phaenomenal conceptions to noumenal reality, 
 without any consciousness of the difficulties of the 
 question. 
 
 But even supposing that this continuity were proved 
 independently and legitimately, all that follows really 
 is that our system is linked on to preceding and pro- 
 bably wholly indefinite lines of past systems. And 
 this only shifts the real difficulty of the case further 
 back. It in no way removes it for reflection. For it 
 remains to be asked Whence the order, the laws, 
 and the life of those systems, or even of those ele- 
 ments, out of which ours has arisen, and whence it 
 has derived these characteristics ? It is the nature of 
 
 s 
 
 f OF THE 
 
 (UNIVERSITY 
 
 V OF 
 
74 LUCRETIUS 
 
 the material of the system, so to speak, which causes 
 the difficulty. We cannot get life or mind out of it 
 now, out of anything but life or mind pre-existent 
 Of what use, then, is it to prolong the existence of 
 matter or energy backwards through millions of years, 
 expecting in that way that an intellectual difficulty 
 arising from the very quality or character of the 
 thing, so to speak, should be thus solved by time ? 
 Why, instead of helping us, all that we can thus get 
 is an increased amount of perplexity. 
 
 It is but fair to Mr. Tyndall to say that he seems by 
 various expressions, to point to a conception of matter 
 different from the ordinary one which is described 
 loosely as that of a mere capacity. He possibly refers 
 to the newly analysed element of force or energy, 
 which in some of its forms is superior to gravitation, 
 is weightless, as in heat, absorbed or radiant. But 
 so long as the element of life is not interposed, 
 neither mass nor energy, nor both combined, will help 
 us in the evolution of life and sensation. What we 
 have not found in experience is life being evolved out 
 of any form of either matter or energy. We have no 
 right, therefore, to suppose that in some time beyond 
 experience it was so evolved. And if the element of 
 
AND THE ATOMIC THEORY. 75 
 
 life be superadded to original mass and energy, either 
 as actual or potential, the whole point at issue is 
 begged. 
 
 Mr. Tyndall has said very strongly that the whole 
 process of evolution, which may be taken generally 
 as meaning the development of the matter of our 
 experience, is "the manifestation of a power abso- 
 lutely inscrutable to the intellect of man. . . . Con- 
 sidered fundamentally it is the operation of an 
 insoluble mystery that life on earth is evolved."* 
 Now I venture to think that this is not only a 
 strong but a rash statement. It supposes a power 
 that operates in evolution, and it declares it to be 
 absolutely inscrutable. In a sense and to a certain 
 extent, no doubt this may be true. The how or 
 mode of this power is inscrutable. We cannot in 
 thought or imagination place ourselves at the point 
 of this power, this potentiality, and therefrom con- 
 ceive the evolution of things. But what is inscrutable 
 as to mode or how of action is not necessarily abso- 
 lutely inscrutable, nor does it involve "an insoluble 
 mystery." We know this at least, that the line of 
 operation of the power, supposing it to be and to act, 
 * Address^ p. 57. 
 
76 LUCRETIUS 
 
 is in accordance with idea, that is, definite end. We 
 cannot possibly express its action in any other way. 
 It is idea varied to the utmost complexity of concep- 
 tion. It is more, it is idea embodied as we conceive 
 idea. Space, Time, Cause, Identity, Perdurance, 
 and other notions, are the only forms in which 
 the real appears to us, and in which we can conceive 
 it. Is, then, the operation of this power so absolutely 
 inscrutable as it is represented to be ? How it makes 
 or moulds matter or atoms to its ends or ideas, we 
 do not know, and perhaps cannot even conceive. But 
 is there not some degree of intelligibility on the 
 point in question ? Is it not something to know that 
 we can describe the results of the working of this 
 power only as we can describe the results of the 
 working of intelligence in our experience ? That 
 thus the highest, indeed the only way, we can con- 
 ceive of this power, inscrutable in many ways, is as 
 if it were embodying ideas, and the ideas essential 
 to our own modes of conceiving things ? Does it 
 not hence appear as if there were some sort of com- 
 munity between the power at work in the great 
 phaenomenal world around us, and the laws and pro- 
 cesses of that intelligence of ours, through which the 
 
AND THE ATOMIC THEORY. 
 
 77 
 
 very conception of the phaenomenal and all that it 
 involves is possible for us ? If we find an analogue 
 of human intelligence in the universe, surely we can- 
 not pronounce the principle of things an insoluble 
 mystery, or a pure unknowable. Comparatively, it 
 is hardly a greater mystery than the working of our 
 own thought, yet we do not regard this as thus either 
 wholly incognisable, or as unreal. 
 
 It seems to me to be an exceedingly narrow way of 
 putting this whole question, to say, as is currently 
 done, that you must have either a development 
 throughout of the organic (vegetable and animal) 
 from the inorganic, according to the laws of crystalline 
 structure and chemical combination, or distinct suc- 
 cessive acts of creative power, interpositions, as it 
 were, at successive stages, of this otherwise progressive 
 development. These are not the true alternatives, 
 and the setting them up implies an illegitimate dual- 
 ism. We have no right to put the unseen or divine 
 power, supposing it to exist, in a sort of spatial ex- 
 tremity to the developing world, and to imagine 
 that this power must act only by interference, inter- 
 position, and addition, at particular points. This 
 is a grossly sensuous image of Deity. It is such 
 
78 LUCRETIUS 
 
 a dualistic conception as to set Deity in a limited 
 sphere by himself, in fact, to abolish his true reality. 
 In development, in crystalline structure, in chemical 
 combination, there is a strictly reasonable, though 
 invisible element, in virtue of which it is what it is. 
 These sensuous manifestations seem to partake of, 
 and to show forth a Reason at the root of things. But 
 this Reason is not to be conceived of as that which 
 existed once at the beginning, set things agoing, and 
 then withdrew, again occasionally to interpose. It is 
 a consecutive and contemporaneous Reason, a power 
 co-existent with everything that exists and assumes 
 orderly form. If we admit it all, it is necessarily 
 always and everywhere. This conception entirely 
 supersedes the need for imagining what are called 
 " distinct creative acts," as if creation stopped and 
 began again, or as if the creative were not the effi- 
 cient and sustaining power all through time. And it 
 is in no way incompatible with a theory of develop- 
 ment, provided we keep in mind the true limits of 
 such a theory viewed as a conception of the progress 
 of inorganic elements. These would give, in suc- 
 cessive periods, increasingly complex forms of struc- 
 ture, inorganic and organic, vegetable and animal. 
 
AND THE ATOMIC THEORY. 
 
 79 
 
 We might go on from the lowest organisms upwards 
 to man, considered as increasingly complex structural 
 forms. This would be one side of the universe the 
 sensuous, pictorial, or visible side. Here antecedent 
 and consequent might be rigidly conjoined through 
 the longest periods of time, uniformly, regularly, so 
 as to give the utmost scope for scientific inquiry, and 
 the firmest ground for scientific law. Yet it might be 
 necessary all the while to consider as co-existing with 
 this evolution, as co-operating with it, an invisible 
 power of Reason, even of Will, which, however, never 
 deviated from the original plan, never broke in upon 
 it by distinct acts of interposition and creation, but 
 silently showed itself all through in a harmonious 
 and contemporaneous development of definite idea in 
 crystalline structure and in chemical combination, of 
 life in the germ, of sensation in the animal, of self- 
 consciousness and personality in man. 
 
 This divorce of Deity from the Universe holds true 
 even of the view adopted by the authors of The Un- 
 seen Universe. Deity, or the Unconditioned, as he is 
 termed in the work, is put back so far in time as to 
 be pushed out of it altogether. He does not act in 
 time but in eternity, whatever that may mean. The 
 
8o LUCRETIUS 
 
 real agents are the Spirit and the Son the former 
 the author of life, the latter of energy. It is quite 
 unscientific and unwarrantable to rise at any point, 
 even of apparent origin, to the Unconditioned himself. 
 We must rest at the best in the delegation of his 
 power to a conditioned invisible intelligence. And the 
 action of the latter takes place only when the energy 
 of the visible universe cannot afford an explanation 
 of a definite effect as, for example, the first appear- 
 ance of life, which cannot, in their view, be regarded as 
 a form of energy transmuted in the ordinary line. If 
 Deity ever had anything to do with the setting agoing 
 of the machine of the visible universe, he has now at 
 least left it solely to the transformation of condition 
 into conditioned, and to the energies and intelli- 
 gences of the invisible sphere, occasionally to help 
 it to higher development, or over a hitch in its way. 
 He is a mere abstraction, or an otiose Deity, who 
 has retired from the scene, leaving the work to sub- 
 ordinates. This is the patch-work of uncalled for 
 hypothesis. The simple, the natural explanation 
 of the difficulties of the insoluble breaks of con- 
 tinuity the rise of the atom, the first appearance 
 of life, of sensation, of mind, is the doctrine of the 
 
AND THE ATOMIC THEORY. 8 1 
 
 manifestation of Divine Energy an energy which 
 is in and through the whole ordinary, or con- 
 tinuous energies. These are daily working to ends 
 and according to idea ; and mere mass or energy, 
 thus made effectual, does not ground, but presupposes, 
 regulative thought. 
 
 The main source of the difficulties on the subject 
 of Supersensible or Divine Power lies in the narrow 
 view of causality, already noticed, which has been 
 long prevalent both in philosophy and in science. In 
 accordance with this conception of causality, as essen- 
 tially sequence in time, men have been led to suppose 
 that the world must be developed all through in a 
 straight line from antecedent to consequent, or from 
 condition to conditioned. When this meagre con- 
 ception was found inadequate to explain the whole 
 development, when, for example, it was found im- 
 possible to show the form of matter or energy which 
 could be transformed into the rise of life, or the 
 material condition of sensation and personality, 
 recourse was had to the theory of special acts of 
 supernatural intelligence. Physical forces and laws 
 were supposed to go on for some time without inter- 
 ference, and then, at different epochs, there was the 
 
82 LUCRETIUS 
 
 direct interposition of this intelligence to put life 
 into the inorganic, and self-consciousness into man, 
 or even to add new species to those already in 
 being. 
 
 But the difficulties of this theory of specialty of 
 action are insuperable. How can the Highest Being 
 be worthily supposed to cut off a part of His being, say 
 physical elements and law, and let this go on, without 
 and apart from Him for some time, and then come in 
 with a new supernatural act across, as it were, the line 
 of time, making an addition to the sum of things ? If 
 we are to connect the notion of time with Divine 
 action, is it not more reasonable to suppose that this 
 invisible power is ever co-existing and co-operative in 
 the course of development, ever living and ever 
 radiant of the life which He possesses, as outcome 
 of His being, as His end and joy? If this be so, 
 invisible causality was in things from the first, is all 
 through them ; the causal connection of natural 
 phenomena is not a thing independent of this in- 
 visible power ; physical antecedents are simply the 
 conditions under which each successive development 
 of this unseen causality, which has equally influenced 
 all sequences from the first, is made manifest in the 
 
AND THE ATOMIC THEORY. 
 
 order of evolution. According to this conception, 
 we may quite well allow atomic combination, me- 
 chanical and chemical in obedience to idea ; we may 
 allow the apparent or phaenomenal passage, when 
 proved, which has not yet been done, of the inorganic 
 basis of life into the living germ ; the rise of sensation 
 in the animal organism, and of personality in man ; 
 and all these as keeping pace with increased structural 
 development But we should err in isolating those 
 successive stages of progress from the free power of 
 their real causality, contemporaneous Life, Reason, 
 and Will fused in a Unity. It would be easy to 
 name this doctrine Pantheism. It is really not so. 
 It is at once Pantheistic and Theistic. It is pan- 
 theistic, inasmuch as it separates no power from 
 Deity ; it is theistic, inasmuch as it represents the 
 world-evolving power as regulated by idea, and, there- 
 fore, grounded in Personality. 
 
 I cannot now enter into the question as to whether 
 or in what form the sensible world, or world of our 
 experience, subsists apart from our perception of it, 
 or apart from any percipient. But it is necessary to 
 say that the question as to the supersensible reality of 
 the outward world is not to be decided forthwith by 
 
84 LUCRETIUS 
 
 any view which we may take of its proper nature and 
 reality while it is an object of perception or ex- 
 perience. This world may appear to us as a resisting 
 force, extended or space-filling, or it may be regarded 
 as that which, in the form either of mass or energy, 
 we are unable to add to or take from in any degree. 
 These would be to us the tests of a sensible world 
 really existing, and different from us the knowers, 
 but still only of a world manifested and existing in 
 relation to our power of conscious effort, or to the 
 conscious limitation of our creative and annihilative 
 power. It is obvious that we cannot transfer this 
 wholly relative conception of sensible reality to an 
 absolute sphere, or one in which we cease to be and 
 to know. Much less can we set up the objective 
 term of the relationship and regard that as the only 
 and the generative one. Yet this is precisely what 
 the atomic theory does, it is, in fact, what every 
 theory of the sort must do, which professes to evolve 
 sensation and thought out of organism, and ultimately 
 out of atomic combination. The truth is we can 
 never absolutely isolate any object, be it atom or 
 molecule, in a proof or demonstration from definite 
 thought, from a self-conscious subject or self which 
 
AND THE ATOMIC THEORY. 85 
 
 deals with it, deals with it even as a basis of proof. Of 
 absolute object we know nothing; as we know nothing 
 of absolute subject, in the sense here required. These 
 may be possible, but they are not intelligible, and 
 therefore are useless in demonstration. No demon- 
 stration can start from a point above human know- 
 ledge. And if the very intelligible contemplation of 
 the atom or molecular mass supposes a conscious 
 personality, we can never show even the possibility 
 of the derivation of personality from the mere ab- 
 stract atom. The personality so derived would be 
 not from the atom or molecule by itself, but from 
 it in its co-existence with the personality which is 
 the condition of its known existence. How can I, 
 the thinker, be proved to be evolved out of an object, 
 out of atoms, when the very definite or known exist- 
 ence of these things supposes a thinker, supposes a 
 me already there along with the atoms to preside 
 over the demonstration of the evolution of self? 
 
 The atomic position as put in ancient and in modern 
 times seems to me to be simply the result of a vulgar 
 or irreflective realism. Atoms are supposed with cer- 
 tain definite properties ; they are supposed to exist 
 and to act ; they are described in the language of the 
 
86 LUCRETIUS 
 
 known and conceived ; yet they are supposed to be 
 before thought or mind is, to be in fact the generators 
 of it. Things minus thought are, and they generate 
 life, sensation, and thought. Now I can understand 
 the philosophical doctrine which relegates all above 
 or beyond a conscious subject, to the sphere either 
 of the meaningless or the unknowable. But I cannot 
 understand the consistency of a doctrine which first 
 of all throws out an intelligent and still holds by an 
 intelligible, which dispenses with a known and yet 
 holds by a known. If there be no conceiving mind, 
 neither atom nor anything with a definite known 
 property can be set up as an absolute or first be- 
 ginning ; if there be a conceiving mind, atom is not 
 the first or absolute beginning of things and thought. 
 I confess, indeed, that I am a good deal surprised 
 that any one, who is at all acquainted with the 
 requirements of a reflective solution of the problem 
 of the ultimate reality of things, should take his 
 stand on the ultimate basis of insentient atoms or 
 forces. Men of abstract thought in these times are 
 not unfrequently charged with ignorance of physical 
 facts and science, and of setting up theories in this 
 spirit. I am not prepared to say that the charge is 
 
AND THE ATOMIC THEORY. 87 
 
 altogether unfounded. But may not the abstract 
 man turn round and say to the physicist, How is it 
 that you set up your atomic and other theories with- 
 out knowing apparently or considering in the least 
 what has virtually been said against all such arbitrary 
 hypotheses by speculative thinkers ? I find in none 
 of the scientific authorities who are now dealing with 
 this question any indication that they are aware of 
 what has been said on this very point during the 
 last two hundred and fifty years, especially since the 
 time of Hume. The attempt of Hume to construct 
 a system of the universe was really founded on the 
 atomic principle. Hume sought to carry out in re- 
 flective philosophy the precepts of Bacon and the 
 practice of Newton. His question was How can I 
 show the genesis of human knowledge, of this world 
 of consciousness, as we find it ? Gravity, the mutual 
 attraction of particles, seems to explain the combina- 
 tions of the sensible world. May there not be 
 something analogous to this in what is called the 
 intellectual or conscious world ? Can I get back to 
 a singular which repeated, copied, or aggregated shall 
 explain this consciousness of ours ? Hume thought 
 this possible. The ultimate element in human know- 
 
88 LUCRETIUS 
 
 ledge was, according to his view, be it dogmatical or 
 hypothetical, "the singular impression of sensation ;" 
 and the principle which aggregated these impressions 
 was the law of association, as with Newton the law of 
 gravity bound together material elements and bodies. 
 Hume sought thus to explain the intelligible world of 
 our experience. And this seems to me to indicate a 
 just view of the nature of the problem. To go back 
 to a point millions of years ago, and to set up certain 
 things called atoms, absolutely divorced from intelli- 
 gence, and to say that in the course of an indefinite 
 time these worked up to our consciousness, appears 
 to me to be putting the possibility of solving the 
 question at a most unnecessary disadvantage. It 
 would be more natural and reasonable to ask, first 
 of all, as with Hume, can we solve the problem of 
 the intelligible world, by starting with singulars en- 
 dowed with sentiency or sensation ? These are really 
 atoms : they are really the last things we can possibly 
 begin with to solve any question of this sort. We 
 cannot get beyond sentient or sensational indivisibles, 
 because we should then part company with definite 
 consciousness of aught whatever. And if we cannot 
 solve the questions of the origin of thought and con- 
 
AND THE ATOMIC THEORY. 89 
 
 sciousness with these sensational atoms, so to speak, 
 much less can we solve it by a hypothesis of insentient 
 atoms, or atoms transcending consciousness. But no 
 one now-a-days surely will say that Hume's solution 
 of the question, regarded dogmatically, is a satisfactory 
 one. Sensation cannot be abstracted from thought, 
 and set up as its origin or genesis. Sensation cannot 
 by any amount of abstraction which remains intelli- 
 gible be separated from category or notion. Sensation 
 must be one, one out of many, here and now, must 
 in fact be taken up along with thought which takes it 
 in, and something more ; which, in a word, is general 
 or universal. And sensation cannot possibly generate 
 thought, for the simple reason that a copy of it would 
 be as much a singular as the original sensation itself. 
 And it could very easily be shown that the theory of 
 the aggregation of sensations through association sup- 
 poses a continuous unity and identity of mind or con- 
 sciousness, for which we have no original or equivalent 
 in any sensation. It could be shown even that this 
 very series or diversity of sensations implies as its 
 correlate this grounding identity. In a word, Kant's 
 position that category or thought is needed for the 
 intelligibility and the existence of sensation, is. irre- 
 
 ~ 
 
 OF THE 
 
 UNIVERSITT 
 
 OF 
 
QO LUCRETIUS 
 
 fragable. But if Hume fails to generate the in- 
 telligible world of our consciousness our thought, 
 personality, identity, or true conscious being from 
 even sensational atoms or singulars, what are we 
 to say of an attempt to generate all this sphere of 
 reality from things called atoms, that have not yet 
 worked up even to the position of isolated sensations ? 
 All we can say is that the men who have started from 
 such a beginning have not apprehended the true 
 
 requirements of the question, and that their hypo- 
 
 i 
 
 thesis of atoms, above sensation and consciousness, 
 cannot be the basis of any demonstration or rational 
 theory of the universe. 
 
 The question which I have but very imperfectly 
 touched at this time is one of a class of questions in 
 which the existence of a society such as this shows 
 there is still here an unflagging interest. It is certainly 
 most fitting and most gratifying to find an interest 
 of this sort vital and powerful in the city where Hume 
 speculated, and but recently Hamilton taught. As 
 the years flow on, one is increasingly impressed with 
 the rareness of a life such as that of Hamilton a life 
 that rose grandly yet naturally above the seductions 
 of the merely professional, to daity communion with 
 
AND THE ATOMIC THEORY. 
 
 questions of ultimate principle and the reality of 
 things. We may well prize the almost singular ex- 
 ample, and cherish its priceless moral power. Apart 
 from the immense amount of faculty absorbed in 
 purely professional pursuits, men, who rise to an 
 interest in truths or facts -in special departments of 
 knowledge, think they have reached a very great 
 height. But the lesson of speculative inquiry is 
 that truth is higher than truths, that a comprehensive 
 sense of the nature and conditions of truth is the 
 most elevating thing of which a man can become 
 conscious, and at the same time the greatest means 
 of teaching true catholicity and toleration. I know 
 nothing less worthy of a reflective man than a state 
 of mind made up in regard to all the great questions 
 of the nature and ultimate issues of things in our 
 experience, made up too probably in the absence 
 altogether of any distinct personal grappling with 
 those questions. This is the traditional spirit, and it 
 is throughout unworthy, and generally intolerant of 
 difficulties it has never itself known. Its only re- 
 commendation, and in these times it is a rare one, is 
 that it sometimes implies an excess of reverence. 
 We may have, and no doubt we have, difficulties 
 
92 LUCRETIUS 
 
 in determining the ultimate truth and reality of things. 
 What is this but to say that we seek that which we 
 know to be, and, as we fail to find it in experience, 
 that the notion or ideal of the thing is higher 
 than any experience which we reach ? Surely if we 
 fail to reach truth in our experience, and we yet seek 
 it, we must be led to the search by some latent ideal, 
 which experience never gave us ? It is our nature 
 going out of itself, and finding that it contains higher 
 things than it can discover in that outward on which 
 it ventures. A faith in this, even when we do not 
 find truths, is ennobling ; it is a faith in the ultimate 
 or supersensible reason of the universe, which is a 
 far higher state of mind than the most confident 
 belief in a compassing on our part of truths. How- 
 ever great may be our doubt or disbelief regarding 
 the actual truths presented to us, or reached by us, 
 there is always hope for us if we hold by a faith in 
 an ideal or possible truth. We shall thus have still 
 a trust in our nature and in what is possible in reason, 
 and this will animate us with hope, and hope will 
 inspire exertion, and keep our hearts and minds open 
 to impressions from the fulness of the Living Power 
 that is above and around us, and in our own souls. 
 
AND THE ATOMIC THEORY. 
 
 93 
 
 A belief in a true, a good, and a beautiful above 
 forms of error, sin, and deformity, is fitted to freshen 
 and broaden our nature, even when we suppose that 
 we have actually reached truth; right, and beauty. 
 For, however wide may appear to be our view or 
 belief of actual truth, beauty, or goodness, we may be 
 assured of this, that it is never equal to the ideal, 
 to the possible for us to attain. The true is always 
 wider than actual truth ; the good always purer than 
 actual goodness ; the beautiful always higher than 
 nature or art can give us ; and the thought that our 
 best result is after all but a faint shadow of a higher 
 ideal will lead us to hold the actual with tolerance, 
 with humility, with reverence, as that which a purer 
 light may some day show to be a very imperfect 
 realisation of a fuller type. In doubt about actual 
 truth and goodness, faith in our ideal will save us 
 from despair and degradation ; in confidence regard- 
 ing the truth which we think we have found, the same 
 faith will keep us from exaggeration, self-confidence, 
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