FROM THALES TO LAMARCK 5 



the injustice of their existence, in the order of time.' Thus 

 worlds follow worlds in a never-ending cycle. 



It is remarkable to encounter thus early a theory of the 

 mechanical creation of the organic world, and a hypothesis of 

 a natural evolution. A philosopher of the fifth century B.C., 

 Empedocles of Acragas, equally famous by his teachings as by 

 his death which he sought and found in the crater of j3tna, does 

 not only take his stand on the theory of descent but sounds also 

 the first distinct note of the Darwinian Theory of the Survival of 

 the Fittest. These doctrines are, indeed, as yet intermixed with 

 many crude and phantastic conceptions, but their appearance is 

 all the more surprising when one considers the very small store 

 of information in natural history which was then available. 



According to Empedocles the origin of all things lies in the 

 four elements of the ancients : water, fire, air and earth. In the 

 beginning of time all four elements rested with one another, 

 unseparated and unmixed, completely held together in the form 

 of a self-contained sphere by the union of love, or as we should 

 say to-day, by the force of attraction. But hatred found an 

 entrance, and with it came separation which led to the founda- 

 tion of the world and all organisms. Through this eternal strife 

 between love and hatred, and the consequent perpetual mingling 

 and separating of the four elements, there gradually arose on the 

 earth organic life. First the plants sprouted from the lap of the 

 maternal earth, then came the animals. But according to 

 Empedocles only single organs developed in the beginning, legs 

 without bodies, noses and eyes without faces, heads without 

 trunks, and so forth. At first different organs became united by 

 chance, thus originating chiefly awful monstrosities unfit to live 

 and doomed to death as soon as they had begun to exist. But 

 as like attracts like and repels unlike, here and there certain 

 creatures originated whose organs fitted and complemented each 

 other. Thus organisms were formed which were fit to live, and 

 if the fitness had been complete capable of reproducing their 

 kind and transmitting their own qualities to their descendants. 



However extravagant and wild these ideas may at the first 

 glance appear, they contain a profound thought : the mechanical 

 origin of the fittest in nature and the survival of the fittest 

 forms. It is the same thought which 2,000 years after arose to 



