! T HALES TO LUCRETIUS 31 



experiments and discoveries show that reconstruction 

 of chemical theories as to the constitution and properties 

 of the atom may happen!) 



5. Change is the law of things, and is brought 

 about by the play of opposing forces. 



Modern science explains the changes in phenomena 

 as due to the antagonism of repelling and attracting 

 modes of motion ; when the latter overcome the former ', 

 equilibrium will be reached, and the present state of 

 things will come to an end. 



6. Water is a necessary condition of life. 

 Therefore life had its beginnings in water ; a theory 



wholly endorsed by modern biology. 



7. Life arose out of non-living matter. 

 Although modern biology leaves the origin of life 



as an insoluble problem, it supports the theory of 

 fundamental continuity between the inorganic and 

 the organic. 



8. Plants came before animals : the higher 

 organisms are of separate sex, and appeared 

 subsequent to the lower. 



Generally confirmed by modern biology, but with 

 qualification as to the undefined borderland between 

 the lowest plants and the lowest animals. And, of 

 course, it recognises a continuity in the order and 

 succession of life which was not grasped by the Greeks. 

 A ristotle and others before him believed that some of 

 the higher forms sprang from slimy matter direct. 



9. Adverse conditions cause the extinction of 

 some organisms, thus leaving room for those better 

 fitted. 



Herein lay the crude germ of the modern doctrine 

 of the ' survival of the fittest! 



