[186] A philosopher of Abdera; the first who taught the system of atoms, which was afterwards more fully developed by Democritus and Epicurus.
[187] He was a disciple of the last-named philosopher, and held the same principles; he also denied the existence of the soul after death. He is considered to have been the parent of experimental philosophy, and was the first to teach, what is now confirmed by science, that the Milky Way is an accumulation of stars.
[188] Spirit.
[189] Psalm xiv. 1, and liii. 1.
[190] To whose (seeming) advantage it is; the wish being father to the thought.
[191] “It is not profane to deny the existence of the deities of the vulgar; but, to apply to the divinities the received notions of the vulgar, is profane.”—Diog. Laert. x. 123.
[192] He alludes to the native tribes of the continent of America and the West Indies.
[193] He was an Athenian philosopher, who, from the greatest superstition, became an avowed atheist. He was proscribed by the Areiopagus for speaking against the gods with ridicule and contempt, and is supposed to have died at Corinth.
[194] A Greek philosopher, a disciple of Theodorus the atheist, to whose opinions he adhered. His life was said to have been profligate, and his death superstitious.
[195] Lucian ridiculed the follies and pretensions of some of the ancient philosophers; but though the freedom of his style was such as to cause him to be censured for impiety, he hardly deserves the stigma of atheism here cast upon him by the learned author.