Chapter Astolat to Atomic Philosophy of A by Brewer's Phrase & Fable

Atin Strife. The squire of Pyrochles, and stirrer up of contention. (Spenser: Faërie Queene , book ii.)

Atkins (See Tommy Atkins .)

Atlantean Shoulders Shoulders able to bear a great weight, like those of Atlas, which, according to heathen mythology, supported the whole world.

"Sage he stood,
With Atlantean shoulders fit to bear
The weight of mightiest monarchies."
Milton: Paradise Lost, book ii. 305--7.

Atlantes Figures of men, used in architecture instead of pillars. So called from Atlas, who in Greek mythology supported the world on his shoulders. Female figures are called Caryatides (q.v.). (See Telamones.)

Atlantes (3 syl.) (in Orlando Furioso). A sage and a magician who lived in an enchanted palace, and brought up Rogero to all manly virtues.

Atlantic Ocean An ocean, so called from the Atlas mountains.

Atlantis A mythic island which contained the Elysian Fields.

The New Atlantis. An island imagined by Lord Bacon, where was established a philosophical commonwealth bent on the cultivation of the natural sciences. (See Utopia, City of the Sun.)

Atlas King of Mauritania in Africa, fabled to have supported the world upon his shoulders. Of course, the tale is merely a poetical way of saying that the Atlas mountains prop up the heavens, because they are so lofty. We call a book of maps an "Atlas," because it contains or holds the world. The word was first employed in this sense by Mercator, and the title-page of his collection of maps had the figure of Atlas with the world on his back.

"Bid Atlas, propping heaven, as poets feign,
His subterranean wonders spread!"
Thomsom: Autumn, 797-- 8.

Atman in Buddhist philosophy, is the noumenon of one's own self. Not the Ego, but the ego divested of all that is objective; the "spark of heavenly flame."

ldquo;The unseen and unperceivable, which was formerly called the soul, was now called the self, Atman. Nothing could be predicated of it except that it was, that it perceived and thought, and that it must be blessed." - Max Muller: Nineteenth Century, May, 1893, p.777.

Atomic Philosophy The hypothesis of Leucippus, Democritus, and Epicurus, that the world is composed of a congeries of atoms, or particles of matter so minute as to be incapable of further diminution.

Of course it is quite impossible even to think of a portion of matter which has not an upper and under side, with some breadth and thickness.
"According to Democritus, the expounder of the Atomic Theory of matter, images composed of the finest atoms floated from the object to the mind." - McCosh: Psychological Cognitive Powers , p. 23.