The atomists, who define motion to be 'a passage from one place to another,' what do they more than put one synonymous word for another?

But there is no reason why there should not be a kind of historic present, just as we might say, 'The Atomists, of whom are Leucippus and Democritus, hold' &c., or 'St. Peter says this, St. Paul says that.'

Rejecting final causes with the atomists, yet handing over material and efficient causes (the latter of which sink with him to the level of mere changing occasional causes) to empirical physics, he assigns to metaphysics, as the true science of nature, the search for the "forms" and properties of things.

The atomists are right when they postulate for the explanation of phenomenal bodies simple, indivisible, eternal units, for every composite consists of simple parts.

In opposition to the mechanical theory of the atomists, which explains forces from matter and makes them inhere in it, Kant holds fast to the dynamical view which he had early adopted (cf. p. 324), according to which forces are the primary factor and matter is constituted by them.]

But while the Eleatics conceived the existent as one, the atomists made an advance by assuming a plurality of reals.