off from the true object of his worship he will lavish his affections on objects unworthy of them. The philosophy of Epicurus was materialism in the most finished form which it acquired in the ancient world. It had the great good fortune also to find in the Roman poet Lucretius an expositor of marvellous genius-the brightest star by far in the constellation of materialists. The atomic materialism of the present day is still substantially the materialism which Epicurus and Lucretius propounded. It seems necessary, therefore, and may not be without present interest, to consider briefly the principles and pretensions of the materialism maintained by the famous Greek philosopher and the still more famous Roman poet. It is a theory, I may remark, which originated in a practical motive. Epicurus avowedly did not seek truth for truth's sake. He sought it, and taught others to seek it, only so far as it appeared to be conducive to happiness. Truth, like virtue, was in his eyes, and in the eyes of his followers, to be cultivated merely as a means of avoiding pain and procuring pleasure. The Epicureans sought, therefore, an explanation of the universe which would free men from religious fears, and from religious beliefs so far as these caused fear. Such an explanation they found in the theory of Democritus, and hence they adopted it. The great reason why Lucretius glories in the Epicurean theory is, that it emancipates the mind from all dread of the Divine anger, and all belief in a future world. Now, it may fairly be doubted, I think, if a system which springs from such a motive can be other than very defective. I grant that there was considerable excuse for the motive in the evils which superstition had caused, and which Lucretius has so powerfully described. In judging either Epicurus or Lucretius, it would be most unjust and uncharitable to forget that the religion with which they were familiar was so fearfully corrupt and degrading as naturally to occasion disbelief in, and aversion to, all religion. But none the less is it true that those whose chief interest in the study of nature is the hope of finding the means of destroying or dispelling religion are almost certain to fall into grave mistakes in their attempts to explain nature. The Epicureans did so. At the same time, the motive, such as it was, induced them to study nature more intensely than they would otherwise have done, or than the rest of their contemporaries did; and physical science profited from this in no small measure. With all its defects the atomic doctrine is the most valuable theory, falling within the sphere of physical science, which modern times have inherited from antiquity. That all physical things at least may be resolved into atomic elements; that these elements can neither be created nor destroyed, neither increased nor diminished in number, by natural forces; that matter may consequently change endlessly in form and force in direction, but that the quantity of matter and the amount of force in the world are always the same,are scientific conceptions so grand that the modern world is apt to believe that the ancient world could not have possessed them. There can be no doubt, however, that all these ideas are more than two thousand years old. They lay at the very foundation of the atomic philosophy. All that the most recent science has done in regard to them has been to verify them in particular instances by exact experiments. Modern men of science are apt to imagine that this is really for the first time to have established them. But this is not the case. No general truth can be established by experiment, or be seen by the eye or touched by the hand. It can only be reached by thought, and thought reached all the general truths in question really, although vaguely, very long ago. I cannot admit that there is an essential difference even in method between the ancient and the modern atomists. To say that the former assumed their theory, and unfolded its applications by reasoning down from it, and that the latter reverse the process and reason up to it by induction, is thoroughly inaccurate. The ancients proceeded so far by induction; it is only so far that the moderns can proceed by it. - According to the theory we are considering, the ultimate elements of things are body and spacethe atom and the void. Space is limitless, immeasurable; the gleaming thunderbolt speeding through it for ever would fail to traverse it, or even in the least to lessen what of it remained. The atoms are numberless, ungenerated, infrangible, unchangeable, indestructible. Their only. qualities are form, magnitude, and density; and their variations in these respects account for the diverse qualities in the diverse objects of the universe. This theory ought at once to raise the questions, What proof is there that these indivisible atoms are really ultimate in any other sense than that they are the primary constituents of body? What evidence is there that they are selfexistent? Why should reason stop with them and seek no explanation of them? How is it that they account not only for other things but for themselves? But to these questions we get no rational replies. These are questions which materialism has never dared fairly to confront and grapple with. It has always shown, on the contrary, by its evasion of them, a certain vague and confused consciousness that there is something unsound and insecure at its very basis. Materialism, which is so bold in hypothetical explanations of things, is strangely timid in self-criticism. Epicurean materialism, like all materialism, affirms matter to be eternal; but when you seek a reason for the assertion, you can find none save that it is impossible something should come from nothing. That is to say, Epicurean materialism, like all materialism, starts with an illegitimate application of the principle of causality, or of its axiomatic expression,-"Nothing which once was not could ever of itself come into being." By the great body of thoughtful men, both in ancient and modern times, this has been taken to mean merely that nothing can be produced without an adequate cause; that every change demands a full explanation; that every phenomenon must have a sufficient ground. Epicurus, Lucretius, and materialists in general, assume it to mean that, since matter is, matter must always have been; that matter could never have been created; that the world was uncaused. If the assumption be a mere assumption -if no reason be given for this extraordinary interpretation-it is a most inexcusable procedure. Now, vast as the literature of materialism is, you will search it through in vain, from the fragments of Democritus to the last edition of Büchner, for a single reason, a single argument, to justify this manifest begging of the whole question. Instead, you will find only poetical and rhetorical reiterations of the assumption itself, diffuse assertions of the eternity, indestructibility, and self-existence of matter. Materialism thus starts with an irrational |