20 PIONEERS OF EVOLUTION PART 



Bonnet and others in the eighteenth century, Erasmus 

 Darwin, grandfather of Charles Darwin, passed the 

 following shrewd criticism on it : * Many ingenious 

 philosophers have found so great difficulty in con- 

 ceiving the manner of reproduction in animals, that 

 they have supposed all the numerous progeny to 

 have existed in miniature in the animal originally 

 created. This idea, besides its being unsupported 

 by any analogy we are acquainted with, ascribes a 

 greater continuity to organised matter than we can 

 readily admit These embryons . . . must possess a 

 greater degree of minuteness than that which was 

 ascribed to the devils who tempted St. Anthony, of 

 whom twenty thousand were said to have been able 

 to dance a saraband on the point of a needle without 

 the least incommoding each other.' 



Although no theistic element could be extracted 

 by the theologians of the Early Christian Church 

 from the systems of Empedocles and Democritus, 

 thereby securing them a share in the influence 

 exercised by the great Stagirite, they were formative 

 powers in Greek philosophy, and, moreover, have 

 ' come by their own ' in these latter days. Their 

 chief representative in what is known as the Post- 

 Aristotelian period is Epicurus, who was born at 

 Samos, 342 B.C. He has suffered the fate of other 

 founders of schools in the perversion of his 

 teaching, the name ' Epicurean ' having been so 

 misinterpreted as to become loosely identified with 

 indulgence in gross and sensual living. He saw 

 in pleasure the highest happiness, and therefore 

 advocated the pursuit of pleasure to attain happi- 

 ness, but he did not thereby mean the pursuit of 



