36 AMONG THE GREEKS. 



animals from this primordial earth slime. This 

 is the prototype of Oken's Ur-Schleim. 



XENOPHANES (576-480) was the founder of the 

 Eleatic school, and is believed to have been a pupil 

 of Anaximander. He agreed with his master so 

 far as to trace the origin of man back to the transi- 

 tion period between the fluid or water and solid or 

 land stages of the development of the earth, but we 

 do not know how far he elaborated his ideas. The 

 ultimate origin of life he traced to spontaneous 

 generation, believing that the sun in warming the 

 earth produces both animals and plants. He is 

 famous in the annals of science as being the first 

 to recognize fossils as remains of animals formerly 

 alive, and to see in them the proofs that the seas 

 formerly covered the earth, and that water was the 

 element from which the earth emerged. PARMEN- 

 IDES, his pupil, developed his cosmogony, and also 

 derived men from the primitive earth slime directly 

 engendered by the sun's heat. 



THE PHYSICISTS. 



The Physicists, Heraclitus, Empedocles, Democ- 

 ritus, and Anaxagoras, were far bolder and more 

 fruitful in their suggestions. Among them we find 

 that the vague notions of metamorphosis and the 

 notions of Abiogenesis derived from the lonians 

 were developed into surprising anticipations of the 

 true Evolution idea. 



