20 PIONEERS OF EVOLUTION. 



Excluding such a thing as divine interference with 

 all Nature, his theology, of course, excludes the pos- 

 sibility of revelation, inspiration, miracles, and 

 grace." He is a being who does not interest himself 

 in human affairs. 



But, differ as the commentators may as to Aris- 

 totle's meaning, his assumed place in the orthodox 

 line led, as will be seen hereafter, to the acceptance 

 of his philosophy by Augustine, Bishop of Hippo, 

 in the fourth century, and by other Fathers of the 

 Church, so that the mediaeval theories of the Bible, 

 blended with Aristotle, represent the sum of knowl- 

 edge held as sufficient until the discoveries of Co- 

 pernicus in the sixteenth century upset the Ptolemaic 

 theory with its fixed earth and system of cycles and 

 epicycles in which the heavenly bodies moved. He 

 thereby upset very much besides. Like Anaximan- 

 der and others, Aristotle believed in spontaneous 

 generation, although only in the case of certain ani- 

 mals, as of eels from the mud of ponds, and of insects 

 from putrid matter. However, in this, both Augus- 

 tine and Thomas Aquinas, and many men of science 

 down to the latter part of the seventeenth century, 

 followed him. For example, Van Helmont, an ex- 

 perimental chemist of that period, gave a recipe for 

 making fleas; and another scholar showed himself 

 on a level with the unlettered rustics of to-day, who 

 believe that eels are produced from horse hairs 

 thrown into a pond. 



Of deeper interest, as marking Aristotle's pre- 



