e father of the modern atomic theories.
Whether Lucretius borrowed them from India, we shall not stop to
inquire, but we may safely assert that modern philosophers, German,
French or English, have borrowed them from one or both.

It is not my purpose to discuss the truth or falsity of the atomic
theory, or the relation of mind to the movements of molecules in the
brain; I simply point out the fact that this is virtually an old
hypothesis; and I leave each one to judge how great a degree of light it
has shed upon the path of human life in the ages of the past, how far it
availed to check the decline of Greece and Rome, and how much of real
moral or intellectual force it has imparted to the Hindu race. The
credulous masses of men should not be left to suppose that these are new
speculations, nor to imagine that that which has been so barren in the
past can become a gospel of hope in the present and the future.

The constant tendency with young students of philosophy, is to conclude
that the hypotheses which they espouse with so much enthusiasm are new
revelations in metaphysics and ethics as well as in physical
science--compared with which the Christian cultus of eighteen centuries
is now effete and doomed. It is well, therefore, to know that so far
from these speculations having risen upon the ruins of Christianity,
Christianity rose upon the ruins of these speculations as, in modified
forms, they had been profoundly elaborated in the philosophies of Greece
and Rome. Lucretius was born a century before the Christian era, and
Democritus, whose disciple he became, lived earlier still. Kanada, the
atomist philosopher of India, lived three centuries before Democritus.
The early Christian fathers were perfectly familiar with the theories of
Lucretius. We are indebted to Jerome for many of the facts which we
possess concerning him. Nearly all the great leaders of the church, from
Origen to Ambrose, had studied Greek philosophy, some of them had been
its devotees before their conversion to the Christian faith. There is at
least incidental evidence that the Apostle Paul was versed in the
current philosophy as well as in the poetry of Greece.

These great men--great in natural powers and in philosophic
training--had seen just what the speculations of Democritus, Lucretius,
Zeno, Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle could do; they had indeed
undermined the low superstitions of their time, but they had proved
powerless to regenerate so