of Democritus, and more especially of his follower, Epicurus. Lucretius
clothed it in sonorous and majestic verse, for it is a theme fitted
above all others to excite the fancy, and to receive the richest
embellishments from the imagination. Modern authors have promulgated it
again and again, with little other change than what was requisite to
adapt it to recent improvements in science, and to engraft upon it some
of their own favorite hypotheses and fancies. The version of it by the
French naturalist Lamarck was the latest and the most in vogue, till the
appearance of the present volume. So frequently has it been confuted,
that the revival of it at this late period seems little more than a
harmless exercise of ingenuity, a poetical and scientific dream, and one
need hardly take the pains to expose its assumptions and fallacies. The
violent suppositions which it involves only remind one of the remark
quoted from Pascal on a former page, that "unbelievers are the most
credulous persons in the world." If set forth only as a novel and
pleasing fancy, it may be classed with other ingenious fictions, that
are published without a thought of deception. But if seriously proposed,
it can be fitly characterized only by borrowing the homely but energetic
language of Dr. Bentley.

"And now that I have finished all the parts which I proposed to
discourse of, I will conclude all with a short application to the
atheists. And I would advise them, as a friend, to leave off this
dabbling and smattering in philosophy, this shuffling and cutting
with atoms. It never succeeded well with them, and they always come
off with the loss. Their old master, Epicurus, seems to have had
his brains so muddled and confounded with them, that he scarce ever
kept in the right way; though the main maxim of his philosophy was
to trust to his senses, and follow his nose. I will not take notice
of his doting conceit, that the sun and moon are no bigger than
they appear to the eye, a foot or half a yard over; and that the
stars are no larger than so many glow-worms. But let us see how he
manages his atoms, those almighty tools that do every thing of
themselves, without the help of a workman. When the atoms, says he,
_descend_ in infinite space (very ingeniously spoken, to make high
and low in infinity), they do not fall plumb down, but decline a
little from the perpendicular, e