ferent elements already distinguished by commonsense. He thought the unity of nature to consist in its periodic evolution from and return into one infinite sum of material (тò άπερov), which, I much in the manner of the "nebula " of modern science, is conceived as both indeterminate in its actual state and infinitely rich in its potentiality. The conception of matter, the most familiar commonplace of science, begins to be recognizable. It has here reached the point of signifying a common substance for all tangible things, a substance that in its own general and omnipresent nature is without the special marks that distinguish these tangible things from one another. And in so far the philosophy of Anaximander is materialistic.

Corporeal

Hylozoism and
Mechanism.

$104. But the earliest thinkers are said to be hylozoists, rather than strict materialists, because of their failure to make certain distincProcesses. tions in connection with the processes of matter. The term hylozoism unites with the conception of the formless material of the world (in), that of an animating power to which its formations and transformations are due. Hylozoism itself was not a deliberate synthesis of these two conceptions, but a primitive practical tendency to universalize the conception of life.

Such "animism" instinctively associates with £ object's bulk and hardness a capacity for locom tion and general initiative. And the materia principles defined by the philosophers retain thi vague and comprehensive attribute as a matter of course, until it is distinguished and separated through attempts to understand it.

That aspect of natural process which was most impressive to Greek minds of the reflective type was the alternation of "generation and decay." In full accord with his more ancient master, Epicurus, the Latin poet Lucretius writes:

"Thus neither can death-dealing motions keep the mastery always, nor entomb existence forevermore; nor, on the other hand, can the birth and increase giving motions of things preserve them always after they are born. Thus the war of first beginnings waged from eternity is carried on with dubious issue: now here, now there, the life-bringing elements of things get the mastery and are o'ermastered in turn: with the funeral wail blends the cry which babies raise when they enter the borders of light; and no night ever followed day, nor morning night, that heard not, mingling with the sickly infant's cries, wailings of the attendants on death and black funeral."

In a similar vein, the earliest conceptions of natural evolution attributed it to the coworking of

2 Lucretius: De Rerum Natura, Bk. II, lines 569-580. Translation by Munro.

two principles, that of Love or union and that of Hate or dissolution. The process is here distinguished from the material of nature, but is still - described in the language of practical life. A = distinction between two aspects of vital phenomena = is the next step. These may be regarded in respect either of the motion and change which attend them, or the rationality which informs them. Life is both effective and significant. Although neither of these ideas ever wholly ceases to be animistic, they may nevertheless be applied quite independently of one another. The one reduces the primitive animistic world to the lower end of its scale, the other construes it in terms of a purposive utility commensurable with that of human action. Now it is with mechanism, the former of these diverging ways, that the development of materialism is identified. For this philosophy a thing need have no value to justify its existence, nor any acting intelligence to which it may owe its origin. Its bulk and position are sufficient for its being, and the operation of forces capable of integrating, dividing, or moving it is sufficient for its derivation and history. In short, there is no rhyme or reason at the heart of things, but only actual matter distributed by sheer force. With this elimina

tion of the element of purposiveness from the hylozoistic world, the content and process of natur are fitted to one another. Matter is that which is moved by force, and force is the determining principle of the motions of matter. Materialism is now definitely equipped with its fundamental conceptions.

and Physical

§ 105. The central conceptions of materialism as a philosophical theory differ from those emMaterialism ployed in the physical sciences only in Science. what is demanded of them. The scientist reports upon physical phenomena without accepting any further responsibility, while those who like Lucretius maintain a physical metaphysics, must, like him, prove that "the minute bodies of matter from everlasting continually up hold the sum of things." But, though they employ them in their own way, materialists and all other exponents of naturalism derive their central conceptions from the physical sciences, and so reflect the historical development through which these sciences have passed. To certain historical phases of physical science, in so far as these bear directly upon the meaning of naturalism, we now turn.

§ 106. From the earliest times down to the present day the groundwork of materialism has

H

most commonly been cast in the form of an atomic theory. Democritus, the first system-builder of The Develop this school, adopted the conception of

ment of the Conceptions of Physical Science. Space and Matter.

indivisible particles (aтoμot), impenetrable in their occupancy of space, and

varying among themselves only in form, order, and position. To provide for the motion that distributes them he conceived them as separated from one another by empty space. From this it follows that the void is as real as matter, or, as Democritus himself is reputed to have said, 66 thing is not more real than no-thing."

3

But atomism has not been by any means universally regarded as the most satisfactory conception of the relation between space and matter. Not only does it require two kinds of being, with the different attributes of extension and hardness, respectively, but it would also seem to be experimentally inadequate in the case of the more subtle physical processes, such as light. The former of these is a speculative consideration, and as such had no little weight with the French philosopher Descartes, whose divisions and definitions so profoundly affected the course of thought in these

'The reader will find an interesting account of these opposing views in Locke's chapter on Space, in his Essay Concerning Human Understanding.