THE DOGMA OF EVOLUTION 



earth's surface had on that problem. He continues: 

 "Those who have their eyes on little things assign as 

 cause of these effects the changeableness of the whole, 

 as if the universe had a beginning and were in a state 

 of becoming. And for this reason they say that the 

 sea becomes less by drying up. . . . But we do not 

 admit as cause of these things that the universe had 

 a beginning and is in a state of becoming; for it is 

 absurd to set the whole in motion because of these 

 small and momentary changes." To see the connec- 

 tion in Aristotle's mind between the drying up of the 

 sea and the finite duration of the universe, we must 

 bear in mind that he held water to be one of the eter- 

 nal elements and, if it should disappear, due to the 

 actual disappearance of the sea, the universe itself 

 loses an eternal element and is finite in duration, and 

 must also have had a beginning in time, for he stated 

 elsewhere that a finite end presupposes a finite begin- 

 ning. Following the explicit authority of Aristotle, 

 all later writers approached the question from the 

 same standpoint. The significance of the transforma- 

 tion of the earth was lost in the larger problem of the 

 finite duration of the universe. 



References which Duhem has gathered from Her- 

 odotus, Strabo, and others, show that the question of 

 the emergence and subsidence of the sea-level had at- 

 tracted a very considerable interest, and a correct in- 

 terpretation of fossils as the remains of sea animals 

 had been given as a proof that portions of the earth 



C 124 3 



