THE ATOMISTIC PHILOSOPHY.
1. ITS PROPOUNDERS.—Empedocles had sought to effect a combination of the
Eleatic and Heraclitic principle—the same was attempted, though in a
different way, by the Atomists, Leucippus and Democritus. Democritus,
the better known of the two, was the son of rich parents, and was born
about 460 B. C. in Abdera, an Ionian colony. He travelled extensively,
and no Greek before the time of Aristotle possessed such varied
attainments. He embodied the wealth of his collected knowledge in a
series of writings, of which, however, only a few fragments have come
down to us. For rhythm and elegance of language, Cicero compared him
with Plato. He died in a good old age.
2. THE ATOMS.—Empedocles derived all determinateness of the phenomenal
from a certain number of qualitatively determined and undistinguishable
original materials, while the Atomists derived the same from an
originally unlimited number of constituent elements, or atoms, which
were homogeneous in respect of quality, but diverse in respect of form.
These atoms are unchangeable, material particles, possessing indeed
extension, but yet indivisible, and can only be determined in respect of
magnitude. As being, and without quality, they are entirely incapable of
any transformation or qualitative change, and, therefore, all becoming
is, as with Empedocles, only a change of place. The manifoldness of the
phenomenal world is only to be explained from the different form,
disposition, and arrangement of the atoms as they become, in various
ways, united.
3. THE FULNESS AND THE VOID.—The atoms, in order to be atoms, _i. e._
undivided and impenetrable unities,—must be mutually limited and
separated. There must be something set over against them which preserves
them as atoms, and which is the original cause of their separateness and
impenetrability. This is the void space, or more strictly the intervals
which are found between the atoms, and which hinder their mutual
contact. The atoms, as being and absolute fulness, and the interval
between them, as the void and the not-being, are two determinations
which only represent in a real and objective way, what are in thought,
as logical conceptions, the two elements in the Heraclitic becoming,
viz. being and the not-being. But since the void space is one
determination of being, it must possess objective reality no less than
the atoms, and Democritus even went so far as to expressly affirm in
opposition to the Eleatics, that being is no more than nothing.
4. THE ATOMISTIC NECESSITY.—Democritus, like Empedocles, though far more
extensively than he, attempted to answer the question—whence arise these
changes and movements which we behold? Wherein lies the ground that the
atoms should enter into these manifold combinations, and bring forth
such a wealth of inorganic and organic forms? Democritus attempted to
solve the problem by affirming that the ground of movement lay in the
gravity or original condition of the material particles, and, therefore,
in the matter itself, but in this way he only talked about the question
without answering it. The idea of an infinite series of causalities was
thus attained, but not a final ground of all the manifestations of the
becoming, and of change. Such a final ground was still to be sought, and
as Democritus expressly declared that it could not lie in an ultimate
reason νοῦς, where Anaxagoras placed it, there only remained for him to
find it in an absolute necessity, or a necessary pre-determinateness
ἀνάγκη. This he adopted as his “final ground,” and is said to have named
it chance τύχη, in opposition to the inquiry after final causes, or the
Anaxagorean teleology. Consequent upon this, we find as the prominent
characteristic of the later Atomistic school (Diagoras the Melier),
polemics against the gods of the people, and a constantly more publicly
affirmed Atheism and Materialism.
5. RELATIVE POSITION OF THE ATOMISTIC PHILOSOPHY.—Hegel characterizes
the relative position of the Atomistic Philosophy as follows, viz.:—“In
the Eleatic Philosophy being and not-being stand as antitheses,—being
alone is, and not-being is not; in the Heraclitic idea, being and
not-being are the same,—both together, _i. e._ the becoming, are the
predicate of concrete being; but being and not-being, as objectively
determined, or in other words, as appearing to the sensuous intuition,
are precisely the same as the antithesis of the fulness and the void.
Parmenides, Heraclitus and the Atomists all sought for the abstract
universal; Parmenides found it in _being_, Heraclitus in the _process_
of being _per se_, and the Atomists in the _determination_ of being _per
se_.” So much of this as ascribes to the Atomists the characteristic
predicate of being _per se_ is doubtless correct,—but the real thought
of the Atomistic system is rather analogous with the Empedoclean, to
explain the possibility of the becoming, by presupposing these
substances as possessing being _per se_, but without quality. To this
end the not-being or the void, _i. e._ the side which is opposed to the
Eleatic principle, is elaborated with no less care than the side which
harmonizes with it, _i. e._ that the atoms are without quality and never
change in their original elements. The Atomistic Philosophy is therefore
a mediation between the Eleatic and the Heraclitic principles. It is
Eleatic in affirming the undivided being _per se_ of the
atoms;—Heraclitic, in declaring their multeity and manifoldness. It is
Eleatic in the declaration of an absolute fulness in the atoms, and
Heraclitic in the claim of a real not-being, _i. e._ the void space. It
is Eleatic in its denial of the becoming, _i. e._ of the arising and
departing,—and Heraclitic in its affirmation that to the atoms belong
movement and a capacity for unlimited combinations. The Atomists carried
out their leading thought more logically than Empedocles, and we might
even say that their system is the perfection of a purely mechanical
explanation of nature, since all subsequent Atomists, even to our own
day, have only repeated their fundamental conceptions. But the great
defect which cleaves to every Atomistic system, Aristotle has justly
recognized, when he shows that it is a contradiction, on the one hand,
to set up something corporeal or space-filling as indivisible, and on
the other, to derive the extended from that which has no extension, and
that the consciousless and inconceivable necessity of Democritus is
especially defective, in that it totally banishes from nature all
conception of design. This is the point to which Anaxagoras turns his
attention, and introduces his principle of an intelligence working with
design.