"We find in the writings of these Hindus materialism, atomism, pantheism, Pyrrhonism, idealism.

Their sterile heads take naturally to the path of negation; so they begin to deny truths that have long been admittedthe vital power, for example, the sympathetic nervous system, generatio equivoca, Bichat's distinction between the working of the passions and the working of intelligence; or else they want us to return to crass atomism, and the like.

Similarly, the profoundest students of science today, men who in all their experiments act implicitly and undeviatingly on the hypotheses of atomism and determinism in the world of research, are usually the last to deny the validity of the basic religious tenets.

These subversive consequences of his theory Hume did not conceal, though he did not push his mental 'atomism' to its logical extreme.

Thought, then, has made the 'atomism' it professed to find.

Taurellus's philosophy of nature, recognizing the relative truth of atomism, makes the world consist of manifold simple substances combined into formal unity: he calls it a well constructed system of wholes.

By his introduction of the atomic conception he founded an epoch in chemistry, which, now for the first, was freed from bondage to the ideas of Aristotle and the alchemists. Atomism, however, was for Boyle merely an instrument of method and not a philosophical theory of the world.

[Footnote 2: The foundation named after him had for its object to promote by means of lectures the investigation of nature on the basis of atomism, and, at the same time, to free it from the reproach of leading to atheism and to show its harmony with natural religion.

Thus in order to relieve itself from the self-dependence of the individual mind, monism allies itself with a spiritual atomism, the most extreme which can be conceived.

Gratefully recognizing the suggestions from both sides, Leibnitz called Cartesianism the antechamber of the true philosophy, and atomism the preparation for the theory of monads.

[Footnote 1: Schelling terms his philosophy of nature dynamic atomism, since it posits pure intensities as the simple (atoms), from which qualities are to be explained.

Herbart characterizes his own standpoint as qualitative atomism, since his reals are differentiated by their properties, not by quantitative relations (size and figure).

[Footnote 1: Nanna, or on the Psychical Life of Plants, 1848; Zend-Avesta, or on the Things of Heaven and the World Beyond, 1851; Physical and Philosophical Atomism, 1855; The Three Motives and Grounds of Belief, 1863; The Day View, 1879; Elements of Aesthetics, 1876; Elements of Psycho-physics, 1860;

They bring this quickly about by beginning a paradox; the sterility of their own heads suggests their taking the path of negation; and truths that have long been recognised are now deniedfor instance, the vital power, the sympathetic nervous system, generatio equivoca, Bichat's distinction between the working of the passions and the working of intelligence, or they return to crass atomism, etc., etc.