With Democritus Epicurus agreed in holding that there is no other form
of reality except that of bodily reality. Every substance, he says in
the words of the Stoics, must affect others, and be affected by them;
and whatever affects others or is itself affected, is corporeal.
Corporeal substance is, therefore, the only kind of substance. [1156]
The various qualities of things, essential as well as accidental
qualities, are accordingly not incorporeal existences, but simply
chance modes of body, the former being called by Epicurus συμβεβηκότα,
the latter συμπτώματα. [1157] But a second something is necessary
besides corporeal substance in order to explain phenomena, viz. empty
space. That empty space exists is proved by the differences of weight
in bodies. For what else could be the cause of this difference? [1158]
It is proved still more conclusively by motion, motion being impossible
without empty space. [1159] Mind as a moving cause, however, seems to
Epicurus altogether superfluous. Everything that exists consists of
bodies and empty space, and there is no third thing. [1160]
Democritus had resolved the two conceptions of body and empty space
into the conceptions of being and not being. True to his position,
Epicurus dispensed with this speculative basis, and clinging to the
ordinary notions of empty space, and of a material filling space,
[1161] he simply proves these notions by the qualities of phenomena.
For this very reason Democritus’s division of body into innumerable
primary particles or atoms appeared to him most necessary. All bodies
known to us by sensation are composed of parts. [1162] If the process
of division were infinitely continued, all things would ultimately be
resolved into the non-existent—in this Epicurus and Democritus
agree;—and conversely all things must have been formed out of the
non-existent, in defiance of the first principle of natural science
that nothing can come from nothing, and that nothing can be resolved
into nothing. [1163] Hence, we must conclude that the primary component
parts of things can neither have come into existence nor cease to
exist, nor yet be changed in their nature. [1164] These primary bodies
contain no empty space in themselves, and hence can neither be divided
nor destroyed, nor be changed in any way. [1165] They are so small that
they do not impress the senses, and as a matter of fact we do not see
them. Nevertheless they must not be regarded as mathematical atoms, the
name atoms being assigned to them only because their bodily structure
will not admit of division. [1166] They have neither colour, warmth,
smell, nor any other property; properties belong only to distinct
materials; [1167] and for this reason they must not be sought in the
four elements, all of which, as experience shows, come into being and
pass away. [1168] They possess only the universal qualities of all
corporeal things, viz. shape, size, and weight. [1169]
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