Note (return) — Chapter VIII

Democritus of Abdera (B.C. 460-357), the companion of Leucippus, also taught "that atoms and the vacuum were the beginning of the universe." 424 These atoms, he taught, were infinite in number, homogeneous, extended, and possessed of those primary qualities of matter which are necessarily involved in extension in space--as size, figure, situation, divisibility, and mobility. From the combination of these atoms all other existences are produced; fire, air, earth, and water; sun, moon, and stars; plants, animals, and men; the soul itself is an aggregation of round, moving atoms. And "motion, which is the cause of the production of every thing, he calls necessity." 425 Atoms are thus the only real existences; these, without any pre-existent mind, or intelligence, were the original of all things.