f> 6 DARWINIANISM. 



ii. 148) " Heaven to forgive him," but he is disposed to 

 consider " embryological characters " not wanting to 

 plants. " The cotyledons and their position, and the 

 position of the plumule and radicle, and the position and 

 form of the whole embryo in the seed, are embryological." 

 Mr. Huxley, as concerns these theories of the Darwins, 

 carries our regards back to the ancients, "seventy 

 generations " ago. Darwin having " poured new blood 

 into the ancient frame" (Life and Letters, ii. 180), he 

 can point with satisfaction to what " the revivified 

 thought of ancient Greece has proved itself to be." 

 This is said, strictly, in relation to that, as Mr. Huxley 

 terms it, " the oldest of all philosophies, that of evolution." 

 We here, at the moment, have only the references of 

 these ancients to botany in regard ; but it suits the 

 situation to remind that there are others more ancient 

 than even Democritus (whom it is not unlikely that, as a 

 supposed materialist, and with the chronology named, 

 Mr. Huxley has more specially in his eye) others quite 

 as relative. Anaximander, for example, is a Darwinian 

 as well of the Erasmian as of the later flight, when he 

 holds that there was an infinite common materia of 

 which all things were formed ; that the first animals, 

 taking birth spontaneously, were afterwards developed 

 the one from the other ; and that it was not otherwise 

 with man, who was at first a fish (Mr. Darwin talks of 

 his " long swimming tail " when he was in this position) ! 

 No wonder that Mr. Lewes is decidedly of opinion that, 

 " It is clear that Anaximander originated one of the 

 great lines of speculative inquiry, and that one, perhaps, 

 the most curious in all antiquity." Then Anaximenes, 

 too, will be held to have been " enlightened " in so far as 

 he opined motion to have existed from all eternity. 

 But, probably, it is Anaxagoras who merits most to be 

 named, generally, in this connection. His theories, only 



