io Greek Biology 



the overwhelming mass of medical as distinct from biological 

 writings that have come down to us. Such, too, is the senti- 

 ment expressed by the poets in their descriptions of the animal 

 creation : 



Many wonders there be, but naught more wondrous than man : 







The light-witted birds of the air, the beasts of the weald and 



the wood 



He traps with his woven snare, and the brood of the briny flood. 

 Master of cunning he : the savage bull, and the hart 

 Who roams the mountain free, are tamed by his infinite art. 

 And the shaggy rough-maned steed is broken to bear the bit. 



Sophocles, Antigone, verses 342 ff. 



(Translation of F. Storr.) 



It is thus not surprising that our first systematic treatment 

 of animals is in a practical medical work, the Tre/n 10,17-779, 

 On regimen, of the Hippocratic Collection. This very peculiar 

 treatise dates from the later part of the fifth century. It is 

 strongly under the influence of Heracleitus (c. 540-475) and 

 .contains many points of view which reappear in later philo- 

 sophy. All animals, according to it, are formed of fire and 

 water, nothing is born and nothing dies, but there is a per- 

 petual and eternal revolution of things, so that change itself 

 is the only reality. Man's nature is but a parallel to that of 

 the universal nature, and the arts of man are but an imitation 

 or reflex of the natural arts or, again, of the bodily functions. 

 The soul, a mixture of water and fire, consumes itself in infancy 

 and old age, and increases during adult life. Here, too, we 

 meet with that singular doctrine, not without bearing on the 

 course of later biological thought, that in the foetus all parts 

 are formed simultaneously. On the proportion of fire and 

 water in the body all depends., sex, temper, temperament, 

 intellect. Such speculative ideas separate this book from the 

 sober method of the more typical Hippocratic medical works 

 with which indeed it has little in common. 



