THE GREEK ATTITUDE 



supposed by Empedocles to be the sketches of the 

 creating force/^ His perfecting principle of variation 

 worked within the different classes, but he nowhere 

 even suggests that one species of animal may evolve 

 into another; in fact, he expressly denies such a trans- 

 formation. Biologists are guilty of the frequent error 

 of using the word, evolution, in two different senses 

 and thus of fusing two ideas into one. As a modern 

 hypothesis they mean by evolution a transmutation 

 from one species to another; Aristotle is merely ex- 

 pressing what must have been common knowledge, 

 the change or difference between parents and offspring. 

 In proof of this, let us turn to Aristotle's own ideas 

 which he gives with the greatest care in his De Parti- 

 bus Animalium :" "The best course appears to be that 

 we should . . . begin with the phenomena presented 

 by each group of animals, and, when this is done, pro- 



!■'■ The fact that a knowledge of prehistoric or palaeontological 

 fossils is necessary as a positive foundation before evolution, in its 

 modern sense, would even be guessed seems almost self-evident. With- 

 out the evidence that types of fauna and flora once existed different 

 from those existing now, what possible ground could there be for 

 picturing a gradual succession of changing forms ^ Although the 

 evidence of palaeontology will be treated rather fully, it is well to 

 mention here that Darwin was attracted first to Lyell's Geology 

 with its thesis of slow change ; that he devotes four chapters in the 

 Origin of Species to palaeontological and geological records; that 

 on page 49, vol. II, he says "that the most obvious and serious ob- 

 jection to his theory is the imperfection of the palaeontological 

 record"; on page 125, he claims that "he who rejects his explana- 

 tion of the imperfection of the record will rightly reject his whole 

 theory." If Darwin was so worried because the record is imperfect, 

 is it likely that he would have thought it worth while to advance 

 his theory or would he even seriously have considered it if he had 

 had no palaeontological record*? 

 18 Book I, 640 a to 646. 



