Sublime

THE founders of atomism were two, Leucippus and Democritus.

The fundamental ideas of the common philosophy of Leucippus and Democritus were due to the former, but as regards the working out it is hardly possible to disentangle them, nor is it, for our purposes, important to make the attempt. Leucippus, if not Democritus, was led to atomism in the attempt to mediate between monism and pluralism, as represent

Democritus was a thorough-going materialist; for him, as we have seen, the soul was composed of atoms, and thought was a physical process.

The theory of the atomists, in fact, was more nearly that of modern science than any other theory propounded in antiquity.

It was common in antiquity to reproach the atomists with attributing everything to chance. They were, on the contrary, strict determinists, who believed that everything happens in accordance with natural laws. Democritus explicitly denied that anything can happen by chance.VI Leucippus, though his existence is questioned, is known to have said one

For the geometer Pythagoras (c. 530 BC), living at Croton in Sicily, the key lay in number and harmony – and the dynamic balance of contraries, based on the opposition of odd and even. For Heraclitus (c. 540–475 BC) the true constant was change itself, in a macrocosm composed of fire and water; for Democritus (c. 460 BC), the essence was a flux of

CHAPTER IX The Atomists