26 EVOLUTION AND DOGMA. 



man been originally such as he is now, he could never 

 have survived." He first propounded the theory of 

 " fish-men," which, in a modified form, was adopted 

 by Oken. Anaximenes, a pupil of Anaximander, 

 made air the cause of all things, while Diogenes 

 of Appolonia held that all forms of animal and 

 plant life originated from primordial slime the 

 prototype of Oken's famous Urschleim. Anaxagoras 

 sought the beginnings of animated nature in germs 

 which preexisted in nature, and were distributed 

 throughout the air and ether. In Empedocles, who 

 is sometimes spoken of as the father of the Evolu- 

 tion idea, we find the germ of what Darwin calls 

 " natural selection," ' and what Spencer denominates 

 " the survival of the fittest." With the representa- 

 tives of the Ionian schools, he was a believer in 

 spontaneous generation, or abiogenesis, but he ap- 

 proximated more closely to the teachings of modern 

 Evolution than did any of his predecessors or con- 

 temporaries. He recognized the gradual develop- 

 ment of the higher from the lower forms of life, and 

 taught that plants made their appearance before 



animals. 



Aristotle's Observations. 



But the greatest of the Greek naturalists, as he 

 was also the greatest of Greek philosophers^ was 



1 In his "Physics," II, cap. vill, Aristotle refers to natural 

 selection and the survival of the fittest, as taught by Empedocles 

 and others, as follows : " For when the very same combinations 

 happened to be produced which the law of final causes would have 

 called into being, those combinations which proved to be advan- 

 tageous to the organism were preserved; while those which 

 were not advantageous perished, and still perish, like the mino- 

 taurs and sphinxes of Empedocles." 



