Page:Edward Thorpe — History of Chemistry, Volume I (1909).pdf/43

Rh exert mutual attractions and repulsions is probably as old as the fundamental conception itself. At least, so far as can be traced, the conceptions of atoms and atomic motion are indissolubly connected. This is not the place to develop the subsequent history of the doctrine of the atom, nor need we now concern ourselves with the old metaphysical quibble of its divisibility or indivisibility. It may be, as Lucretius said, that the original atom is very far down. It may be that the physical atom is something which is not divided, not something that cannot be divided. This theory, dimly perceived in the mists of antiquity, has grown and strengthened with the ages, and in its modern application to the facts of chemistry has acquired a precision and harmony unimagined even by the poets and thinkers of old. We shall see later how the whole course of the science has been controlled, illumined, and vivified by it. It is not too much to say that the chemistry of to-day is one vast elaboration of this primeval doctrine.