Not many years ago if we had been asked in what regions of physical
science the advance of discovery was least apparent, we should have
pointed to the hopelessly distant fixed stars on the one hand, and to
the inscrutable delicacy of the texture of material bodies on the
other.
Indeed, if we are to regard Comte as in any degree representing the
scientific opinion of his time, the research into what takes place
beyond our own solar system seemed then to be exceedingly unpromising,
if not altogether illusory.
The opinion that the bodies which we see and handle, which we can set
in motion or leave at rest, which we can break in pieces and destroy,
are composed of smaller bodies which we cannot see or handle, which
are always in motion, and which can neither be stopped nor broken in
pieces, nor in any way destroyed or deprived of the least of their
properties, was known by the name of the Atomic theory. It was
associated with the names of Democritus, Epicurus, and Lucretius, and
was commonly supposed to admit the existence only of atoms and void,
to the exclusion of any other basis of things from the universe.
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