Page:Early Greek philosophy by John Burnet, 3rd edition, 1920.djvu/358

344 excluded it. It is totally unlike anything we meet with in earlier days.

This suggests at once that it is only in the vortex that the atoms acquire weight and lightness, which are, after all, only popular names for facts which can be further analysed. We are told that Leukippos held one effect of the vortex to be that like atoms were brought together with their likes. Here we seem to see the influence of Empedokles, though the "likeness" is of another kind. It is the finer atoms that are forced to the circumference, while the larger tend to the centre. We may express that by saying that the larger are heavy and the smaller light, and this will amply account for everything Aristotle and Theophrastos say; for there is no passage where the atoms outside the vortex are distinctly said to be heavy or light.

There is a striking confirmation of this view in the atomist cosmology quoted above. We are told there that the separation of the larger and smaller atoms was due to the fact that they were "no longer able to revolve in equilibrium owing to their number," which implies that they had previously been in a state of "equilibrium" or "equipoise." Now the word ἰσορροπία has no necessary implication of