48 Views of Plato and Aristotle. 



was unable to conceive the universe as other than 

 a progression of graduated existence from inert 

 matter at the base up through ascending forms 

 of life till it culminated in the rational activity 

 of man. If our agnostic scientists reject the 

 theology of Aristotle, they will give him credit 

 at least for his idea of cosmic development, of a 

 world subject to evolution. And, fifthly, they 

 will have to confess that we find in Plato an ex 

 plicit profession of the evolutionary faith in the 

 antiquity of man. Either, says Plato, the human 

 race had no beginning at all, or had a beginning 

 in infinitely remote ages at a time so far back 

 that in the interval seasons have changed, ani 

 mals have been transformed, and human civiliza 

 tion has been many times acquired, lost, and re- 

 acquired. 



*,. Among the Greeks, then, we find these five 

 constituent elements of the modern evolution- 

 hypothesis : the belief in the immeasurable an 

 tiquity of man, [the conception of a progressive 

 movement in the life of nature, the notion of a 

 survival of the fittest) and the twofold assump 

 tion that any thing or any animal may become 

 another since all things are at bottom the same. 

 Perhaps if we knew as much of the speculations 



^ of other ancient peoples as we know of the Greeks, 



