instance, at page 139, we take an admitted doctrine of perception, and an admitted doctrine of the existance of the Divine, we bring the two together by means of a syllogism; but we add nothing in the shape of doctrine.

CHAPTER IV.

DEMOCRITUS.

THE laughing Philosopher, the traditional antithesis to Heraclitus, was born at Abdera (the new settlement of the Teians after their abandonment of Ionia), in the 80th Olymp. His claim to the title of Laugher, yeλaoivos has been disputed, and by moderns generally rejected. Perhaps, the native stupidity of his countrymen,-and they were renowned for abusing the privilege which men have of being stupid,-afforded him incessant matter for laughter. Perhaps he was by nature satirical, and thought ridicule the test of truth. We have no

proof of his being a satirist, except the tradition: that may be false, but must have had some origin.

Democritus was of a noble and wealthy family, so wealthy that it entertained Xerxes at Abdera on his return from Asia. Xerxes in recompense left some of his Magi to instruct the young Democritus. Doubtless it was their tales of the wonders of their native land, and of the deep unspeakable wisdom of their priests, that inspired him with the passion of travel. "I, of all men," he says, "of my day, have travelled over the greatest extent of country, exploring the most distant lands; most climates and regions have I visited, and listened to the most experienced and wisest of men; and, in the calculations of line-measuring no one hath surpassed me, not even the Egyptians, amongst whom I so

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journed five years." In travel he spent his patrimony; but he exchanged it for an amount of knowledge which no one had previously equalled. The Abderites, on his return, looked on him with vague wonder. The sun-burnt traveller brought with him knowledge which, to them, must have appeared divine. Curiosity encompassed him. He exhibited a few samples of his lore, foretold unexpected changes in the weather, and was at once exalted to the summit of that power to which it is a nation's pride to bow. He was offered political supremacy, but wisely declined it.

It would be idle to detail here the various anecdotes which tradition hands down respecting him. They are mostly either impossible or improbable. That, for instance, of his having put out his eyes with a burning-glass, in order that he might be more perfectly and undisturbedly acquainted with his reason, is in violent contradiction to his very theory of the soul, to which the eye was one of the great inlets. We may credit the account of his having led a quiet sober life, and of his dying at a very advanced age. More we cannot credit.

Respecting his Philosophy we have more certain evidence; but even that has been so variously interpreted, and is in many parts so obscure, that historians have been at a loss to give it its due position in relation to other systems. Reinhold, Brandis, Marbach, and Hermann view him as an Ionian; Buhle and Tennemann, as an Eleatic ; Hegel, as the successor of Heraclitus, and the predecessor of Anaxagoras; Ritter, as a Sophist; and Zeller, as the precursor of Anaxagoras. Of all these attempts at classification, that by Ritter is the worst it is pitiable. Because Democritus has an

occasional phrase implying great vanity-and those mentioned by Ritter seem to us to imply nothing of the kind-he is a Sophist. That is a sample of Ritter's arguing!

We are convinced that all the above attempts are erroneous, and for a similar reason to that which guided historians in their classification of Empedocles. Democritus is distinguished from the Ionians, by the denial of all sénsible quality to the primary elements; from the Eleatics by his affirmation of the existence of a multiplicity of elements; from Heraclitus on the same ground; from Anaxagoras, as we shall see presently; and from Empedocles, by denying the Four Elements, and the Formative Love. All these differences are radical. The resemblances, such as they are, may have been coincidences, or derived from one or two of the later thinkers: Parmenides and Anaxagoras for example.

What did Democritus teach? This question we will endeavour to answer somewhat differently from historians; but our answer shall be wholly grounded on precise and certain evidence, with no other originality than that of developing the system from its central principles.

We commence with Knowledge; and with the passage of Aristotle, universally accredited though variously employed: "Democritus says, that nothing is true; or, if so, it is not evident to us. Nevertheless, as, in his system, the sensation constitutes the thought, and at the same time is but a change in the sentient being, the sensible phænomena (i. e. sensations) are of necessity true."* *We feel bound to quote the original: roι over sixα ἀληθες ἤ ἡμῖν γ ̓ ἄδηλον. Ὅλως δὲ διὰ τὸ ὑπολαμβάνειν, φρόνησιν μὲν

What does this pregnant passage mean? It means that sensation, inasmuch as it is sensation, must be true: that is true subjectively; but sensation, inasmuch as it is sensation, cannot be true objectively. M. Renouvier thinks that Democritus was the first to introduce this distinction; but our readers will remember that it was the distinction established by Anaxagoras. Sextus Empiricus quotes the very words of Democritus: "The sweet exists only in form, the bitter in form, the hot in form, the cold in form, colour in form; but in causal reality (airin)* only atoms and space exist. The sensible things which are supposed by opinion to exist have no real existence, but only atoms and space exist." Adv. Mathem. vii. p. 163. When he says that colour, &c., exist in form only, he means that they are sensible images constantly emanating from things; a notion we shall explain presently. A little further on Sextus reports the opinion, that we only perceive that which falls in upon us according to the disposition of our bodies; all else is hidden from us.

Neither Condillac nor Destutt de Tracy have more distinctly identified sensation and thought, than Democritus in the above passages. But he does so in the spirit of Kant rather than that of Condillac; for, although with the latter he would say, "Penser c'est sentir," yet would he with the former draw the distinction between phenomenal and noumenal perception.

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But did sensation constitute all knowledge?

τὴν αἴσθησιν, ταύτην δ ̓ εἶναι ἀλλοίωσιν, τὸ φαινόμενον κατὰ τὴν αἴσθησιν, ἐξ ἀνάγκης ἀληθὲς εἶναι.—Met., iv. 5.

* Modern editors read it, "in reality." We are inclined. however, to preserve the old reading, as more antithetical to

youg.