the fact that we must think about the atoms, not in an _abstractly_ logical
and an _abstractly_ mathematical way, but concretely; that we have to
consider them, not as mere quantities, but as qualities; and that we can
then easily arrive at the perception of something which occupies space, and
which therefore, according to abstract conclusions of logic and
mathematics, could still be thought of as divisible _in abstracto_, but
which, even as a consequence of its _quality_, of its concrete natural
form, is no longer divisible in reality. Nevertheless, in spite of all
these remarkable attempts at overcoming the difficulties of the theory of
atoms, that antinomy returns as often as we undertake to make that clearly
perceptible which we have at last gained a partial conception of; and thus
shows us, from this side also, that even with the theory of atoms we have
arrived at the limit where not only our observation, but also the
preciseness and certainty of our conceptions, ceases.

By the atomic theory, we do not gain anything for the ultimate explanation
of the world and its contents, not even if its present hypothetical value
should be changed into a complete demonstration. For the whole theory but
removes the question as to the origin of things from their sensible
appearance to the elements of that appearance, and leaves us standing just
as helpless before the elements as before the appearances. For {145} whence
does the whole richness of the appearances in the world come? If the atoms
are all alike, and their laws of force the simplest we can imagine, then
their grouping into all the developments and formations of which we observe
such an infinite and regularly arranged abundance, is not less unexplained
than if we had not gone back to the theory of atoms at all. But if the
atoms and their laws of force are different, the difficulty is not
simplified, but doubled. For, first, the theory then owes us an answer to
the questions wherein the difference of the atoms consists and whence it
comes; and, second, the question we have to consider in supposing a
uniformity of the atoms, is not disposed of or answered--the question,
namely, as to the causes which bring these different atoms together to form
precisely those complexities of atoms which we observe as the world of
phenomena.

This insufficiency of the theory of atoms in explaining the world and its
contents, is another proof to us that, however great the practical value o