HISTORY AND NATURAL HISTORY 23 



A Greek philosopher named Empedocles seems 

 to have had the first recorded glimmerings of an 

 idea of the universal and fundamental nature of 

 co-operation which underlies group action, as well 

 as a conception of the opposing principle of the 

 struggle for existence. Empedocles lived in the fifth 

 century B.C., and he was not only a thinker but so 

 much a man of affairs that he was offered a king's 

 crown, which he refused. (128) 



He owes his present-day fame to two long poems 

 in which he outlined the idea that there are natural 

 elements: fire, earth, air, and water, which are acted 

 upon by the combining power of love and the dis- 

 rupting power of hate. Under the guidance of the 

 building force of love the separate elements came 

 together and formed the world. Separate parts of 

 plants and various unassorted pieces of animals arose 

 from the earth. These, Empedocles taught, were 

 often combined and at first the results were mon- 

 strous shapes, which in time became straightened 

 around until, still guided by combining love, they 

 clicked, to make the more perfect animals we now 

 know. It has taken us almost two and a half mil- 

 lennia to transmute this poetic conception into the 

 less picturesque but more exact and workable ex- 

 pression acceptable to modern science. 



After the fertile Greek era there intervened in this 



