Marcus Aurelius Antoninus to Himself - College of Stoic Philosophers

xxiv INTRODUCTION SECT.
in assuming a plurality of primary elements failed to
meet the pressure of Eleatic logic. Moreover, in its
account of motion it fell back on psychical terms, love
and hate, that assumed the indwelling operation of some
life-power resident in matter. Thus it was only fitted
to be a stepping-stone to the Atomistic doctrine of
Leucippus,
which received scientific form and com-
pleteness from the genius of Democritus.
Empedocles, rationally convinced that nothing could
either come into being or pass out of being, constructed
his finite universe from a few limited groups of material
elements. Democritus pushed the conclusions of his
trenchant and rigorous materialism much further, and
cut away the remnants of mythological prepossession and
phraseology which clung about the system of Empedocles.
Repudiating as unreasonable the idea that the same
elements can assume different forms, he found his unit
of being in the indivisible atom. To the atoms, infinite
in number and infinitesimal in size, he attributed none
but the primary qualities of solid matter, those which
result from its property of filling space, viz., position,
shape, arrangement. Only in respect
of these is varia-
tion possible ; and the variety of things represents only
that variety of form and combination in the molecules,
behind which it is impossible for thought to pass.
Democritus did not shrink from the conclusions to which
this absolute pluralism committed him. Unlimited void
was necessary as the field of action for the innumerable
molecules ; the free motion of atoms in space was the
single (or twofold) presupposition
which formed the
ultimate demand on reason. All qualitative differences