76 THE HISTORY OF ^CREATION. 



himself, and about the origin of the world around him, the 

 natural theories of development, on the other hand, are 

 necessarily of much more recent origin. These views are 

 met with only among nations of a more matured civilization, 

 to whom, by philosophic culture, the necessity of a know- 

 ledge of natural causes has become apparent; and even among 

 these, only individual and specially gifted natures can be 

 expected to have recognized the origin of the world of 

 phenomena, as well as its course of development, as the 

 necessary consequences of mechanical, naturally active 

 causes. In no nation have these preliminary conditions, for 

 the origin of a natural theory of development, ever existed 

 in so high a degree as among the Greeks of classic antiquity. 

 But, on the other hand, they lacked a close acquaintance 

 with the facts of the processes and forms of nature, and, 

 consequently, the foundation based upon experience, for a 

 satisfactory unravelling of the problem of development. 

 Exact investigation of nature, and the knowledge of nature 

 founded on an experimental basis, was of course almost 

 unknown to antiquity, as well as to the Middle Ages, and 

 is only an acquisition of modern times. We have therefore 

 here no special occasion to examine the natural theories 

 of development of the various Greek philosophers, since 

 they were wanting in the knowledge gained by experience, 

 both of organic and inorganic nature, and since they 

 almost always, as the consequence, lost themselves in airy 

 speculations. 



One man only must be mentioned here by way of 

 exception, — Aristotle, the greatest and the only truly great 

 naturalist of antiquity and the Middle Ages, one of the 

 grandest geniuses of all time. To what a degree he stands 



