ANAXIMANDER. 701 



ANAXIMANDER, EARLIEST PRECURSOR OF DARWIN. 



By Dr. CHARLES R. EASTMAN, 



HARVARD UNIVERSITY. 



. A S has been aptly remarked by Huxley, ' There is no snare in which 

 -*—*- the feet of a modern student of ancient lore are more easily en- 

 tangled, than that which is spread by the similarity of the language 

 of antiquity to modern modes of expression.' The great exponent of 

 evolution observes further in the same connection that he does * not 

 pretend to interpret the obscurist of Greek philosophers ' ; all that he 

 wishes to point out is that ' the words, in the sense accepted by com- 

 petent interpreters, fit modern ideas singularly well.'* 



The force of these remarks becomes manifest when one inquires 

 into the rightfulness of regarding Anaximander, the Milesian, com- 

 panion or pupil of Thales (' sodalis Thaletis/ Cicero calls him) in 

 the sixth century before our era, as the first who foreshadowed modern 

 ideas of evolution. It may be of some profit for us to consider briefly 

 the manner in which his doctrines have been interpreted by naturalists, 

 and thereafter to examine into the original sources, which have pre- 

 served for us the skeleton of his system, and can alone enlighten us in 

 regard to his conception of nature. An inquiry of this kind will not 

 be without value in case it merely serves to bring home and emphasize 

 the fact of historical continuity of ideas which are commonly consid- 

 ered as modern. 



It is a matter of no little moment, when we stop to realize it, that 

 conceptions of organic evolution, and also of a heliocentric cosmogony, 

 assumed shape in the mind of man, however vaguely or imperfectly, in 

 periods of remote antiquity, and have exercised a determining influence 

 on human thought ever since. Natural laws become invested with 

 new and more profound interest on finding that they have seldom been 

 discovered offhand, revealed, as it were, by a single flash of genius ; but 

 by the progressive development of ideas, extending sometimes through- 

 out centuries, and leading from dim, far-distant adumbrations up to 

 our present understanding of the truth. There comes to us, also, 

 through the tracing of ideas back to their sources, an increased sense 

 of our indebtedness to the princely legacy of Greek thought. It has 

 been justly said by one of Huxley's distinguished pupils, that ' even 

 amidst our present wealth of facts, the impassable boundaries of hu- 

 man thought seem to confine us to unconscious revivals of Greek con- 



* Huxley, T. H., ' Evolution and Ethics,' in his ' Collected Essays,' Vol. IX., 

 p. 69 (London, 1894). 



