7o 4 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



Believing, as we think rightly, that Anaximander should be re- 

 garded as the earliest precursor of Darwin, it will be profitable for 

 us at this point to examine the small collection of fragments which 

 have survived, and which constitute the authentic sources of informa- 

 tion in respect to his ideas of organic evolution. Notwithstanding 

 these fragments are but five in number, they have not hitherto been 

 searched out and brought together under one head in English form. 

 Those desirous of consulting the original texts will find them collated 

 in the indispensable works of Hermann Diels,* Bitter and Preller,f 

 Fairbanks,^ Mullach and others. 



Original Sources Relating to the Evolutionary Doctrines of 



Anaximander. 



Pseudo-Plut. Stromal. 2 (Dox. 579). — Further he [Anaximander] de- 

 clares that in the beginning man must have been born from animals of a dif- 

 ferent species. His reason is that, whereas other animals quickly find food for 

 themselves, man alone requires long rearing. And it is evident that had he 

 been originally such as he now is, he could never have survived. § 



Hippolyt. Philosoph., I., 6 (Dox. 660). — Primitive animals were derived 

 from moisture evaporated by the sun. In the beginning man was of very 

 different form than at present, and resembled a fish. 



/Etius Plac, V., 19, 4 (Dox. 430). — Anaximander taught that the first 

 animals were begotten in the water, and were covered with prickly integuments; 

 on attaining sufficient age, they emerged upon the land, and, their coverings 

 having burst, they soon changed their manner of life. 



Plut. Symp., VIII., 8, 4 (Diels, Fragm. d. Vor-Sokrat., p. 20). — Where- 

 fore they (the Syrians) reverence the fish as of the same origin and the same 

 family as man, holding a more reasonable philosophy than that of Anaximander. 

 For he declares, not that fishes and men were generated at the same time, but 

 that at first men were engendered in the form of fishes ; and that growing up as 

 sharks§ do till they were able to nourish themselves, they then came forth on 

 dry ground. 



Censorin. Dies Natal., 4, 7. — Anaximander of Miletus believed that either 

 fish, or animals very like fish, sprang from heated earth and water, and that 



in following wise : " Der Verfasser geht in seinen Kombinationen oft zu weit : 

 er sucht aus dem durftigen Material zu viel herauszupressen und lasst in der 

 Ausfiillung der Liicken der Ueberlieferung seiner Phantasie allzusehr die Ziigel 

 schiessen" (Jahresbe. Class. Altertumsw., Vol. CXVL, p. 33, 1903). 



Moreover, as Dr. Alfred Gudeman has warned us in his interesting essay 

 on 'Literary Frauds among the Greeks' ('Class. Stud, in honour of Henry 

 Drisler,' 1894), much that appertains to the early dox ograp hers is tainted with 

 the suspicion of ungenuineness, or of later interpolation. 



*'Doxographi Grseci ' (Berlin, 1879). Idem, * Fragmente der Vor- 

 sokratiker, Griechisch und Deutsch' (Berlin, 1903). 



t'Historia Philosophise Grseca?,' 8th ed. (Gotha, 1898). 



J'The First Philosophers of Greece' (London, 1898). 



§ An interesting commentary on the argument here presented, which is 

 recognized as extremely important for the general theory of evolution, is to 

 be found in N. M. Butler's essay: 'Anaximander on the Prolongation of Infancy 

 in Man ' (' Class. Stud, in honour of Henry Drisler,' New York, 1894). 



§ The reading of yaleoi in place of na?Mioi is conjectural, but approved, 

 nevertheless, by the best editors. 



