CHAPTER II 



THE HISTORY OF EVOLUTION 



It is often difficult to know what is cause and what is effect in 

 past occurrences and it is therefore not easy to decide whether the 

 innate curiosity of developing intelligence first led man to set 

 down records in primitive form and thus stimulated his desire for 

 the accumulation of knowledge, or whether the increase of knowl- 

 edge led to a conscious desire for some way to record it. In either 

 case facility of written expression increased rapidly with the de- 

 velopment of more complex social systems and the earliest civili- 

 zations found man al)lc to make permanent records with great 

 accuracy of detail. There is abundant evidence that he took note 

 of the organic world very early in his existence beyond the mere 

 need of supplying himself with food and clothing, but we find noth- 

 ing like an organized natural science until the Greek and Roman 

 civilizations arose. Several men of those periods are entitled to 

 rank as pioneers in the field of natural history. 



The Greek Philosophers. Among the Greek philosophers 

 Anaximander (611-547 b.c), Empedocles (495-435 b.c), Democ- 

 ritus (460?-357 b.c.) and Aristotle (384-322 b.c.) and his pupil and 

 associate, Theophrastus (370-286 b.c), produced works which 

 show a surprising clarity of interpretation for a period when so 

 little was known of the world of nature. In an examination of the 

 beliefs of these men a salient feature is seen to be that striving for 

 an explanation of hfe and living things which has led gradually up 

 to our modern ideas of evolution. The pioneer work which estab- 

 lishes the early Greeks as the founders of natural history is, indeed, 

 largely lacking in the observation and recording of facts, with the 

 exception of that contributed by Aristotle and Theophrastus; it 

 neglects experimental methods and original investigation, but it 

 strikes at once into the problems which have remained forever 

 since open to investigation. While these men saw but vagu(4y and 

 expressed themselves fantastically in the light of modern knowl- 

 edge, we must remember that their investigations and inquiries 



5 



