our ignorance and uncertainty, may pay them the more
worship and reverence.' Now as science demands the radical extirpation
of caprice, and the absolute reliance upon law in nature, there grew,
with the growth of scientific notions, a desire and determination to
sweep from the field of theory this mob of gods and demons, and to
place natural phenomena on a basis more congruent with themselves.

The problem which had been previously approached from above, was now
attacked from below; theoretic effort passed from the super- to the
sub-sensible. It was felt that to construct the universe in idea, it
was necessary to have some notion of its constituent parts--of what
Lucretius subsequently called the 'First Beginnings.' Abstracting
again from experience, the leaders of scientific speculation reached
at length the pregnant doctrine of atoms and molecules, the latest
developments of which were set forth with such power and clearness at
the last meeting of the British Association. Thought, no doubt, had
long hovered about this doctrine before it attained the precision and
completeness which it assumed in the mind of Democritus, [Footnote:
Born 460 B.C.] a philosopher who may well for a moment arrest our
attention. 'Few great men,' says Lange, a non-materialist, in his
excellent 'History of Materialism,' to the spirit and to the letter
of which I am equally indebted, 'have been so despitefully used by
history as Democritus. In the distorted images sent down to us
through unscientific traditions, there remains of him almost nothing
but the name of "the laughing philosopher," while figures of
immeasurably smaller significance spread themselves out at full length
before us.' Lange speaks of Bacon's high appreciation of
Democritus--for ample illustrations of which I am indebted to my
excellent friend Mr. Spedding, the learned editor and biographer of
Bacon. It is evident, indeed, that Bacon considered Democritus to be
a man of weightier metal than either Plato or Aristotle, though their
philosophy 'was noised and celebrated in the schools, amid the din
and pomp of professors.' It was not they, but Genseric and Attila and
the barbarians, who destroyed the atomic philosophy. 'For, at a time
when all human learning had suffered shipwreck, these planks of
Aristotelian and Platonic philosophy, as being of a lighter and more
inflated substance, were preserved and came down to us, while things
more solid sank and almost passed into