mines the relations of the parts of the universe one
to another. Thought, that is, a thinker, a reason,
a productive mind, was the fundamental and primary
fact. Intelligence or unification presided in the
world; isolation or individualization of parts was only
due to an act of abstraction, which, while it distin-
guishes, never absolutely and entirely separates.

According to the opposite or mechanical and mate-
rialist theory of the universe, thought is a subjective
phenomenon of the human brain, and has no
universal connection or significance in the universe
of things. As of only human interest, it ought to be
ignored in an attempt to understand how things came
to be what they are. The idea of a plan, or design of
an antecedent idea, must be treated as a piece of
anthropomorphism, and abandoned. Such is the
tendency of the philosophy of Democritus; with
whom there came to the front for the first time a con-
ception which, after much rejection and long neglect,
comes to the front again at the present day. The
earlier philosophers, Thales ( 600 B.C.), and his succes-
sors, had attempted to explain the variety which at
present is found on the earth by supposing it to be
the last in the series of metamorphoses of some one
primitive body. Their idea of this original matter
was concrete and sensuous. They had at first no
conception of matter as something inert and in-
animate, but believed it to be endued with the spirit
or personality which they felt in themselves; and
even when they got rid of this vitality or animism, they
supposed that the primeval matter had qualitative

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