14 READINGS IN EVOLUTION, GENETICS, AND EUGENICS 



" Children resemble their parents not only in congenital characters, 

 but in those acquired later in life. For cases are known where parents 

 have been marked by scars and children have shown traces of these 

 scars at the same points; a case is also reported from Chalcedon in 

 which a father had been branded with a letter, and the same letter 

 somewhat blurred and not sharply defined appeared upon the arm of 

 the child." 



POST-ARISTOTELIANS 



With Aristotle the evolution idea reached a high watermark and 

 thereafter the tide steadily declined. Pliny, Epicurus, Lucretius, and 

 others kept the idea alive, but added nothing of importance to 

 Aristotle's contribution. 



Lucretius (99-55 B.C.) appears to have been chiefly a follower of 

 Empedocles in so far as his ideas as to the origin of animals are con- 

 cerned. He ignored Aristotle and his much more advanced phi- 

 losophy of Nature, finding the earlier, more mythical conceptions 

 better suited to poetic expression. He was not truly an evolutionist, 

 for he believed that all animals and plants arose fully formed from the 

 earth. Lucretius is of importance chiefly as a retarding factor, for 

 his ideas were accepted and admired even up to the eighteenth century; 

 witness Milton's immortal verse : 



"The Earth obey'd, and straight, 

 Op'ning her fertile womb, teem'd at a birth 

 Innumerous living creatures, perfect forms, 

 Limb'd and full grown." 



THE EARLY THEOLOGIANS 



The evolution idea made no progress from the time of Aristotle 

 until the revival of learning in the Middle Ages. The chief inhibiting 

 factor was the church, which favored traditional knowledge and the 

 special-creation idea in its most literal form. Yet the early theo- 

 logians, such as Gregory, Augustine, and Thomas Aquinas, were open- 

 minded about the evolution idea and attempted to reconcile it with 

 the scriptural account of creation. 



"Gregory of Nyssa (331-396 A.D.) taught," says Osborn, "that 

 Creation was potential. God imparted to matter its fundamental 

 properties and laws. The objects and completed forms of the Universe 

 developed gradually out of chaotic material. " 



