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Before we pass to a consideration of this alluring theory, and particularly to a comparison of it with the theory of Anaxagoras, we must catch a glimpse of the personality of the men to whom the theory owes its origin. One of these, Leucippus, presents so uncertain a figure as to be almost mythical.
Leucippus and Democritus, that sense and intelligence arise from external images; so neither of them can operate without the assistance of image falling upon us. The Stoics say that what the senses represent is true; what the imagination, is partly false, partly true.
Leucippus and Democritus cover the world round about, as with a garment and membrane. Epicurus says that that which abounds some worlds is thin, and that which limits others is gross and condensed; and of these spheres some are in motion, others are fixed.
The citizens, however, rise in revolt and rescue Leucippus, who thereupon goes into voluntary exile. He is followed by Urania, a simple and innocent girl, who, knowing her mother's designs upon his life, hopes to counteract her malice by attending on the prince in the disguise of a page.
In addition to the natural and partly ideal schools, the Ionic, the Eleatic, the Pythagorean and the Platonic, there arose those of Leucippus, Democritus, and Epicurus, which might be called mechanical, and that of Aristotle, which takes a middle course between the idea and the fact, between the dynamic and the mechanical explanation of the universe.
With abstinence also, and above all with that noblest abstinence, the abstinence from vice and wrong. The laughing philosopher Atoms and void No god and no truth III. LEUCIPPUS AND DEMOCRITUS. Leucippus is variously called a native of Elea, of Abdera, of Melos, of Miletus. He was a pupil of Zeno the Eleatic. Democritus was a native of Abdera.
Anaximander has taught me that the universe came from some primitive substance; Leucippus and Democritus spoke to me of empty space with primitive corpuscles or atoms. Anaxagoras made believe that the atom had reason. Xenophanes wished to persuade me that God and the Universe were one.
Malpighi, following the high doctrines of Hippocrates, Leucippus, and Lucretius, had given emphasis to the dogma that nature works in leasts, "tota in minimis existit natura."
Plato, that it is the deflux of the spinal marrow. Epicurus, that it is a fragment torn from the body and soul. Democritus, that it proceeds from all the parts of the body, and chiefly from the principal parts, as the tissues and muscles. Leucippus and Zeno say, that it is a body and a fragment of the soul.
The Ionian philosophers had speculated on the physical constitution of the universe, the Pythagoreans on the mystical properties of numbers; Heraclitus had propounded his philosophy of fire, Democritus and Leucippus had struck out a rude form of the atomic theory, Socrates had raised questions relating to man, Plato had discussed them with all the freedom of the dialogue, while Aristotle had systematically worked them out.
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