On a point in the Doctrine of the Ancient Atomists. 257 iroieiv olov re (rvvridepevas ovre (Bapos e^eiv, an ^ (Metaph. N. 3. p. 1090 a. 32) /cara pevroi to 7roielv e dpidpwv to, <pv<riKa ora/xara, e< pf] i-^ovrav fiapos p.t]8e KovcporrjTa e-^ovra Kov<poTT)Ta nal /3apoy, ioiKa(Ti (oi ILvBayopeioi) ire pi aXXov ovpavov Xe-yciv koi croipdrcov dXX' ov rav al(T$rjrv, Aristotle attacks the Pythagoreans in almost the very terms with which Alexander in a passage quoted above had assailed Democritus for assigning no weight to the parts of his atoms which are themselves possessed of weight. Now it is all very well for Aristotle and his satellites to prove logically the absurdity of producing extension from the unex- tended, weight from the imponderable, matter from the immate- rial; but what is their own -rrp^rr] vtj? It can only escape a similar confutation by eluding from its incomprehensibility the grasp of the logician. The question seems to be as undecided at the present time as in the days of Pythagoras and Democritus, or, if decided, to have been determined rather in favour of them than of their adversaries*. As subsidiary to the above remarks and to the corresponding part of my paper on Lucretius, I will here expose a note of Lachmann's in support of his unjustifiable alterations in the text of Lucretius i. 628 and 631, lest any one should be incautiously led into error by it. " Vere Lambinus," he says, " ni minimas et quce multis sunt partibus aucta. in n. 498 =Ne qncedam (semina dicit) cogas inmani maximitate Esse, supra quod jam docui non posse probari. scilicet his ipsis versibus neque alibi." What ! the fact that nature divides all things into the smallest parts con- ceivable a proof that some of these must be inmani maximitate ! This note is a striking instance of that strange weakness and
- "To Boscovich appears to belong completely in accordance with the direc-
tTae credit of having perceived that if the tion in which mathematical physics have atoms were conceived of simply as un- of late been moving, that it was adopted extended centres of force, the primary as it were unconsciously almost all qualities of bodies might sufficiently be modern investigations on subjects con- accounted for without . supposing them nected with molecular action are in effect to result from the primary qualities of based on his views, though his name is, their constituent atoms a mode of ex- comparatively speaking, but seldom men- planation of which, though there has tioned and this theory. . . is in truth the been something like a return to it in highest developement which the mathe- some recent speculations, it may be ob- matical theory of matter has as yet served that it explains nothing. Bos- received." Cambridge Phil. Trans, Vol. covich's theory seems to have been so vin. p. 604. Vol. I. June, 1854. 17
