LUCRETIUS AND THE ATOMIC THEORY.*
We have delayed to notice the pleasant and suggestive address. of Professor Veiteh too long, but as he is on the eve of publishing a longer and more important work, our criticism may serve per- haps more opportunely to remind our readers of that welcome- fact. Professor Veitch is an elegant and judicious scholar, who handles philosophical questions with a calm sobriety and a poetieat enthusiasm which are not often found united in the same person. Whether he has entirely succeeded in his modest attempt * Lucretius and the Atomic Theory. By John Veit* LL.D., Professor of Logi°. and Rhetoric In the Unhersity of Glasgow. Glasgow : James blaclehose. to make the Atomic Theory of Lucretius clear to others may be doubted, but this perhaps is the fault rather of the Roman poet himself than of his expositor. How far removed this expositor is from all patriotic prejudices may be inferred from his statement that, as regards their explanations of the order of things, Lucretius is greatly in advance of Hume. For the latter merely identified physical causality with antecedence and consequence, but the former, by the notion of uniform and predictable order which he inculcated, "gave men courage in a certain mastery over nature—the courage of faith in the future—the conviction that that future was not at the bidding of wholly capricious powers, of which men knew nothing except from their supposed effects,—their lawlessness, and tendency to interfere through passion with the course .of things. There was here a firm basis for human action,— for foresight, prudence, and manly self-reliance. It was man asserting himself against the supposed control of a class of invisible powers, which his reflection taught him were unworthy, morally and intellectually, of his better thoughts." Now we may readily concede to Professor Veitch that this service at least Lucretius tried his utmost to render to mankind, but we pause when passing to a more exact examination of the poet's exploits in the realm of physics. The Professor says that "in his conception 43f atomic transition from individual to individual through the ehanges of life and death, Lucretius has very closely anticipated the root idea of the modern doctrine of the transform- ation of energy, as his view of the impossibility of the annihi- lation of the primordia, and the absolute undiminishablenese of the sum of matter, is explicitly that of the conservation of matter." We hold that such language is liable to misconstruc- tion. These splendid theories, even at the present day, can bardly be said, after all the laborious tests and experiments which have been applied to them, to be more than provisionally satis- factory hypotheses, assumed to explain certain phenomena. We cannot tell how soon an apparently trifling discovery may give us entirely new formulas ; and be these theories ever so firmly established, they do and must remain entirely inadequate to ex- plain either the origin of matter or the origin of energy. Yet this was precisely the service which Lucretius called upon them to perform, and this is precisely the rook upon which his system of the universe splits.
The popular conception of any philosophical doctrine is neces- sarily imperfect, and very generally unjust. Epicurus was re- presented as a gormandising hog, by men who had no inkling of the nature of that pleasure which he asserted to be the "highest good ;" and Dr. Johnson thought that by kicking a atone he had refuted the metaphysical speculations of the acute bishop, whom ." coxcombs (not often so supported) vanquished with a grin." In similar fashion, Lucretius hes been supposed to be a silly atheist, who believed that the universe was the result of a fortuitous combination of atoms. How long, it was contemp- tuously asked, might a bag full of type be ebaken before the works of Shakespeare, for instance, would leap forth from it, -arranged as we have them now ? It is obvious how unfair, or rather how mistaken are the attacks thus made upon the philo- sophical principles of Epicurus, Lucretius, and Berkeley. It is curious, however, to see how the popular conception of these principles does, in a rough-and-ready way, albeit on mistaken grounds, hit the weak points in the theories of these philosophers. Epicurne, indeed, rightly held that true comfort was the result of temperance and moderation in all things, but his summum bon= was, after all, not much more than the supra-sensual (ithersinnliche) comfort of a refined porker who had learned to abstain from too much pig-wash, and to apricate cleanly and like—an Epicurean. He has paid the penalty of ignoring the higher ends of life by beinggibbeted as a glutton and a winebibber, and his very name has become a by-word among the civilised nations of the world. Lucretius, too, although nearly all the propositions in his immortal poem which' refer simply to the constitution of matter are worthy of admira- tion, as either certainly true, or as foreshadowing doctrines held by the greatest naturalists of modern times, was utterly and hopelessly wrong in supposing that he bad by these propositions laid bare to mortal ken the secrets of existence. It is possible indeed, and even probable, that the ultimate constitution of matter is not an insoluble problem. Many eminent philosophers hold that it is, but since all the phenomena of light are explained by particular motions of a medium constituted according to simple laws, and so perfectly explained that the exaot motions corresponding to all the colours of the spectrum are known, we may reasonably expect the other attributes of in-
organic matter to be referred to some original material far less complex than the matter apparent to our senses. But this is all that we can expect to do. Sooner or later we must be brought face to face with some ultimate fact the true significance of which, while we see through a glass darkly, we may not hope to pene- trate. The motions producing the phenomenon of light are known, but we do not know what moves. We do not know
what the Germans call dos Ding an sick and to borrow a jest from Lamb, we can never understand a leg of mutton in its quid- dity. For ourselves, indeed, we humbly confess that we have never been able to understand an atom in its impropriety, if we
may misuse this word to mean absence of all properties. We bow deferentially to Professor Veitch's statement that he sets but little store on the argument that an atom, as a piece of matter having necessarily length and breadth, to regard it as indivisible is contradictory. He contends that a thing which is quantitatively divisible may, at the same time, be qualitatively indivisible. But an indivisible, incompressible, absolutely hard, and absolutely mobile piece of matter is as inconceivable to us as it was, we fancy, to Aristotle. To him, or we are mistaken, au atom with-
out properties, and the nature of motion were mysteries ; and as Joseph Bertha, in Erckmann-Chatrian's Conscript felt it no dis- grace to run away at Lutzen when Michael Ney ran away, so we feel it no disgrace to "faint in the obscurity" of a labyrinth
which puzzled the brains of the Stagirite. But we understand, we think, and cordially assent to the following remarks of the Professor :—
" As to whether and bow the world began, whether and bow atoms arose, the most complete sense of continuity in our experience will never enlighten us. It cannot assure us that the atom arose out of a previous antecedent or condition in time, for the simple reason that it cannot, in the first ease, tell us whether the atom had a beginning in time or not. If the atom has always been, if it has never been generated at all, there is no need of supposing an antecedent or condition of it in an invisible sphere. And the fact that we in our experience find ante- cedents passing into consequents, find things that apparently began in time working in a uniform way, oan never assure us that things or atoms about which we do not per se, or by direct experience, know whether they began to be or not, are related to a previous determining antecedent or condition."
We cannot attempt to say anything about the interesting criti- cism on Tyndall and Hume which fills the concluding portion of this interesting address, but readers who are fond of such discus- sions will find that it will amply repay their attentive study. Compared with the childish fancies of Descartes, his vortices, and balls of dust, and snakes ; compared, too, with the marvellous bubbles of Leibnitz, some "empty-extraordinary-alkaline-colour- able-feminine," others "full-extraordinary-acid-coloured-mascu- line "—although a humanoid like Lamb might find them food
for delicious fancy the atoms which Lucretius got from Epicurus, and Epicurus from Democritua and Leucippus are fruitful subjects for meditation. It is curious, at all events, to find modern science returning to the never-ending motion of the atoms of the old Greek philosophers, and the worthlessness of their ideas as an explanation of the origin of things by no means
impairs the value of the conception of moving atoms as the con- stituent parts of gross matter as it exists. Still to physicists no less than to metaphysicians the wise warning of the mediaeval sage can never be given too often :—" Magna, Mu= maxima pars sapientia3 eat, qurodam sequo animo nescire velle." This
warning does not apply to Mr. Veitch, whose withers are urn- wrung. wrung. But it s not every one who is disposed to treat
the theory which he discusses with the same amenity and consideration that he does. The great French positivist, M. Littr4S,
for example, says, not without bitterness, that "the great material- istic poet Lucretius knew a multitude of things which we do not. He knew that there were happy and tranquil gods, who dwelt itt a heaven where they had nothing to do, and did it. He knew that atoms existed, he knew the shape of those atoms, and he knew that this world was the result of the movements of those atoms,—atoms, by the way, which have nothing in common with the atoms of our chemists. He knew also that animals were the result of spontaneous generation, and that they emerged in a half-formed state and with tender skins from the ground, which was their matrix. How did he know all this ? Well, he thought that all this explained the nature of things, as he conceived it, better than any other explanation. Obeying an intellectual im- pulse, which is not peculiar to himself or to the age in which he lived, he thought that a proposition which explained anything to his own satisfaction must be true, and without scruple or difficulty he accepted an explanation instead of a demonstration."
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