Now go on repeating the process of division till the separate portions of water are so small that we can no longer perceive or handle them. Still we have no doubt that the subdivision might be carried further, if our senses were more acute and our instruments more delicate. Thus far all are agreed, but now the question arises, Can this subdivision be repeated forever?
According to Democritus and the atomic school, we must answer in the negative. After a certain number of subdivisions, the drop would be divided into a number of parts each of which is incapable of further subdivision. We should thus, in imagination, arrive at the atom, which, as its name literally signifies, cannot be cut in two. This is the atomic doctrine of Democritus, Epicurus, and Lucretius, and, I may add, of your lecturer.
According to Anaxagoras, on the other hand, the parts into which the drop is divided are in all respects similar to the whole drop, the mere size of a body counting for nothing as regards the nature of its substance. Hence if the whole drop is divisible, so are its parts down to the minutest subdivisions, and that without end.
The essence of the doctrine of Anaxagoras is, that the parts of a body are in all respects similar to the whole. It was therefore called the doctrine of Homoiomereia. Anaxagoras did not of course assert this of the parts of organized bodies such as men and animals, but he maintained that those inorganic substances which appear to us homogeneous are really so, and that the universal experience of mankind testifies that every material body, without exception, is divisible.
The doctrine of atoms and that of homogeneity are thus in direct contradiction.
But we must now go on to molecules. Molecule is a modern word. It does not occur in Johnson's "Dictionary." The ideas it embodies are those belonging to modern chemistry.
A drop of water, to return to our former example, may be divided into a certain number, and no more, of portions similar to each other. Each of these the modern chemist calls a molecule of water. But it is by no means an atom, for it contains two different substances, oxygen and hydrogen, and by a certain process the molecule may be actually divided into two parts, one consisting of oxygen and the other of hydrogen. According to the received doctrine, in each molecule of water there are two molecules of hydrogen and one of oxygen. Whether these are or are not ultimate atoms I shall not attempt to decide.
We now see what a molecule is, as distinguished from an atom.
A molecule of a substance is a small body such that if, on the one hand, a number of similar molecules were assembled together they would form a mass of that substance, while on the other hand, if any portion of this molecule were removed, it would no longer be able, along with an assemblage of other molecules similarly treated, to make up a mass of the original substance.
