Leucippus is variously called a native of Elea, of Abdera, of Melos, of
Miletus. He was a pupil of Zeno
the Eleatic. Democritus was a native of Abdera. They seem to have been
almost contemporary with
Socrates. The two are associated as thorough-going teachers of the
‘Atomic Philosophy,’ but Democritus, ‘the laughing philosopher,’ as he was
popularly called in later times, in distinction from
Heraclitus, ‘the weeping
philosopher,’ was much the more famous. He lived to a great age. He himself
refers to his travels and studies thus: “Above all the men of my time I
travelled farthest, and extended my inquiries to places the most distant. I
visited the most varied climates and countries, heard the largest number of
learned men, nor has any one surpassed me in the gathering together of
writings and their interpretation, no, not even the most learned of the
Egyptians, with whom I spent five years.” We are also informed that, through
desire of learning, he visited Babylon and Chaldaea, to visit the
astrologers and the priests.
Democritus was not less prolific as a writer than he was voracious as a
student, and in him first the division of philosophy into certain great
sections, such as physical, mathematical, ethical, was clearly drawn. We
are, however, mainly concerned with his teaching in its more strictly
philosophical aspects. His main doctrine was professedly antithetical to
that of the Eleatics, who, it will be remembered, worked out on abstract
lines a theory of one indivisible, eternal, immovable Being. Democritus, on
the contrary, declared for two co-equal elements, the Full and the Empty, or
Being and Nonentity. The latter, he maintained, was as real as the former.
As we should put it, Body is unthinkable except by reference to space which
that body does not occupy, as well as to space which it does occupy; and
conversely Space is unthinkable except by reference to body actually or
potentially filling or defining it.
A History of Greek Philosophy /
THE ATOMISTS /
LEUCIPPUS AND DEMOCRITUS
