assumption, the true character of which it endeavours to conceal by appealing merely to the imagination.

It was not enough, however, for the purpose which the atomic atheists had in view that they should merely suppose the atoms to be eternal. It was further necessary for them to suppose that the atoms, although without colour or any property perceptible to the senses, had every variety of shape, and the particular sizes, required to enable them to compose the vast variety of things in the universe. If they had all been alike, they could, according to the admission of the atomists themselves, have formed no universe. But, curiously enough, while admitting that, they did not see that they were bound to ask and to explain how the atoms came to be unlike; how some of them came to be smooth and round, others to be cubical, others to be hooked and jagged, &c.; and, in a word, how they all came to be just so shaped as to be able collectively to constitute an orderly and magnificent universe. Still more curiously, all materialism down to this day has been afflicted with the same blindness. My belief is, that if it were not thus blind it would die. The light would kill it. It would see that the atoms on which it theorised could not be really ultimate, and implied the power and wisdom of God.

The Epicurean materialists found that, even

when they had imagined their atoms to be eternal, and to be endowed with suitable shapes, their hypothesis would not work. They found that they required to put something more into their atoms before they could get a universe from them. For they had to ask themselves, How do the atoms ever meet and combine? It is obvious that if they all fall in straight lines, and with the same rapidity, they can never meet. Hence Democritus said that the larger ones move faster than the smaller ones, and that this is the cause of their collision and combination. But, objected. Aristotle, that cannot be the case in a perfect vacuum where no resistance whatever is offered to the fall of bodies, whether large or small. There all bodies must fall with equal rapidity. The Epicureans admitted that this objection was fatal to the atomic theory as presented by Democritus. Still, as they denied any intelligent First Cause, they had to devise some hypothesis of the contact and aggregation of the atoms. They imagined, accordingly, a small deviation of the atoms from a straight line. But how can this deviation be produced? Not from without the atoms, since nothing but void space is supposed to be without them, and all divine or supernatural interposition is expressly rejected. The Epicureans had therefore no other resource than to hold that the atoms were endowed with a certain spontaneity,

and deviated from the straight line of their own accord; they ascribed to them a slight measure of freewill. They have often been ridiculed for this, and, it cannot be denied, with justice; but it is also obvious that there was scarcely any other hypothesis for them to adopt, so long as they adhered to their atheism and materialism.

In even a brief and general estimate of the Epicurean system, this notion, that "when bodies. fall sheer down through empty space by their own weights, at quite uncertain times and spots they swerve a little, yet only the least possible, from their course," must have due stress laid on it. For it was no accessory or subordinate feature of the Epicurean theory, but what was most distinctive as well as original in it; what differentiated it from the allied doctrine of Democritus on the one hand, and from the antagonistic doctrine of the Stoics on the other. It was precisely by means of this conception that Epicurus and Lucretius fancied they escaped the necessity of believing either in the creative and providential action of God, or in the sway of fate,-the two beliefs which seemed to them to be the great enemies of mental peace.

The hypothesis of a slight power of deviation in the atoms was rested on two reasons. In the first place, it was needed to explain the formation of the universe without the intervention of a super

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natural cause. The formation of the universe supposed collision of the atoms. But variety of shape and even difference of weight failed to account for this. If empty space offers no resistance to anything in any direction at any time, all things, whatever their weight, must move through it with equal velocity. If they so move, however, in perfectly parallel lines, they must move, for ever, without clashing against one another, and consequently without producing varied motions and compound bodies. Thus nature never would have. formed anything. How, then, could aught have been produced? Only by a certain freedom of action in nature, or by the free action, the intervention, of a Being above nature. But it was a foregone conclusion with Epicurus and Lucretius, just as it is with a host of modern scientific men, that they would not seek for anything above nature that they would not believe there could be anything beyond matter. They were determined to account for everything entirely by natural principles, by material primordia. Therefore they were compelled to ascribe contingency to nature, spontaneity to matter. At the same time. they had a respect for facts, and therefore attributed to nature as little contingency, to matter as little spontaneity, as possible. The atoms must swerve a little, and yet so very little, that neither they nor the bodies composed of them can be

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described as moving "slantingly" or "obliquely," since this the reality would refute. The only deviations possible must be imperceptible deviations. It has been said that the Epicureans, by ascribing to atoms the power of deviation, introduced a quite incalculable element into their system. But they had foreseen the objection, and also that they could return to it a twofold answer, -namely, first, that the deviations were imperceptible, leaving all that was perceptible calculable, so that there could be nowhere any miracle or interruption of natural action; and secondly, that although it could not be determined when and where an atom would act in the way of deviation, once it had so acted all the results could be determined-or, in other words, that spontaneity and law, contingency and calculation, were not incompatible. Much might, perhaps, be said in defence of these answers. The weakness of the hypothesis lay less at this point than in ignoring the consideration that if the atoms possessed the power of deviation that was itself a fact to be accounted for. Whence came the countless hosts of atoms to be all provided with so remarkable a characteristic? Some one ground or cause was demanded for their all agreeing in this curious and useful peculiarity. Such single ground or cause could only be a something above and beyond themselves. The feeble wills with which the