rated that the Daltonian atom is a
compound, and that in truth there is but a single true atom, which,
combining with its fellows perhaps in varying numbers and in different
special relations, produces the Daltonian atoms, then the philosophical
theory of monism will have the experimental warrant which to-day it
lacks; then we shall be a step nearer to the atom of Democritus in one
direction, a step farther away in the other. We shall be nearer, in that
the conception of Democritus was, in a sense, monistic; farther away, in
that all the atoms of Democritus, large and small alike, were considered
as permanently fixed in size. Democritus postulated all his atoms as of
the same substance, differing not at all in quality; yet he was obliged
to conceive that the varying size of the atoms gave to them varying
functions which amounted to qualitative differences. He might claim for
his largest atom the same quality of substance as for his smallest, but
so long as he conceived that the large atoms, when adjusted together to
form a tangible substance, formed a substance different in quality
from the substance which the small atoms would make up when similarly
grouped, this concession amounts to the predication of difference of
quality between the atoms themselves. The entire question reduces
itself virtually to a quibble over the word quality, So long as one atom
conceived to be primordial and indivisible is conceded to be of such a
nature as necessarily to produce a different impression on our senses,
when grouped with its fellows, from the impression produced by other
atoms when similarly grouped, such primordial atoms do differ among
themselves in precisely the same way for all practical purposes as do
the primordial elements of Anaxagoras.

The monistic conception towards which twentieth-century chemistry seems
to be carrying us may perhaps show that all the so-called atoms are
compounded of a single element. All the true atoms making up that
element may then properly be said to have the same quality, but none the
less will it remain true that the combinations of that element that
go to make up the different Daltonian atoms differ from one another in
quality in precisely the same sense in which such tangible substances as
gold, and oxygen, and mercury, and diamonds differ from one another. In
the last analysis of the monistic philosophy, there is but one substance
and one quality in the universe. In the widest view of that ph