Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: June 21, 2025
With all his studies in the modern schools of science, he was not a whit more advanced in learning than Democritus of old Democritus who based his system of morals on the severest mathematical lines, taking as his starting-point a vacuum and atoms, and who after stretching his intellect on a constant rack of searching inquiry for years, came at last to the unhappy conclusion that man is absolutely incapable of positive knowledge, and that even if truth is in his possession he can never be certain of it.
A weeping statue was Democritus; another, with grinning mouth, was labelled Heraclitus; an old man with a long beard was Sappho; and an old woman, Avicenna; and so on. As I was smiling at this extraordinary collection, I saw the czarina, preceded by Count Gregorius Orloff, and followed by two ladies, approaching. Count Panin was on her left hand.
Amongst the ancient philosophers, many discoveries are attributed to Democritus and Anaxagoras; and, connected with chemical arts, the narrative of the inventions of Archimedes alone, by Plutarch, would seem to show how great is the effect of science in creating power.
Epicuras and Democritus were nearly of the same opinion as Zeno; and the Athletæ, that their strength might be unimpaired, never married.
Architects have sought to revive the purest forms of both Gothic and Grecian. If they could not create a new style, they would imitate the old: as in philosophy, they would go round in the old circles. As science revives the atoms of Democritus, so art would reproduce the ideas of Phidias and Vitruvius, and even the poetry and sanctity of the Middle Ages.
I could say as much to you of the left shoulder of a crocodile, as also of a chameleon, without prejudice be it spoken to the credit which is due to the opinion of old Democritus; and likewise of the stone of the Bactrians, called Eumetrides, and of the Ammonian horn; for so by the Aethiopians is termed a certain precious stone, coloured like gold, and in the fashion, shape, form, and proportion of a ram's horn, as the horn of Jupiter Ammon is reported to have been: they over and above assuredly affirming that the dreams of those who carry it about them are no less veritable and infallible than the truth of the divine oracles.
But first it may be demanded what the thing we speak of is, or what this facetiousness doth import? To which question I might reply as Democritus did to him that asked the definition of a man, "'Tis that which we all see and know": any one better apprehends what it is by acquaintance than I can inform him by description.
Apart from the atoms of Democritus, and apart also from the speculations of mediæval writers, the molecules of Bonnet and of Buffon almost anticipated the hypothesis of Pangenesis.
Among these were Democritus, Aristotle, and his follower Themistius, Siresius the Platonic; who so far relied on dreams which some accident or other brought about, that they thence endeavoured to persuade men there are no dreams but what are founded on realities.
Democritus was a naturalist, hence he took as his starting-point the natural phenomena commonly ascribed to the influence of the gods. Prodicus, on the other hand, started from the intellectual life of man. We learn that he had commenced to study synonyms, and that he was interested in the interpretation of the poets.
Word Of The Day
Others Looking