32 PIONEERS OF EVOLUTION PART 



10. Man was the last to appear, and his primitive 

 state was one of savagery. His first tools and 

 weapons were of stone ; then, after the discovery of 

 metals, of copper ; and, following that, of iron. His 

 body and soul are alike compounded of atoms, and 

 the soul is extinguished at death. 



The science of Prehistoric Archaeology confirms 

 the theory of man's slow passage from barbarism to 

 civilisation ; and the science of Comparative Psychology 

 declares that the evidence of his immortality is neither 

 stronger nor weaker than the evidence as to the im- 

 mortality of the lower animals. 



Such, in very broad outline, is the legacy of sug- 

 gestive theories bequeathed by the Ionian school 

 and its successors, theories which fell into the rear 

 when Athens became a centre of intellectual life in 

 which discussion passed from the physical to those 

 ethical problems which lie outside the range of this 

 survey. Although Aristotle, by his prolonged and 

 careful observations, forms a conspicuous exception, 

 the fact abides that insight, rather than experiment, 

 ruled Greek speculation, the fantastic guesses of 

 parts of which themselves evidence the survival of 

 the crude and false ideas about earth and sky long 

 prevailing. The more wonderful is it, therefore, that 

 so much therein points the way along which enquiry 

 travelled after its subsequent long arrest ; and the 

 more apparent is it that nothing in science or art, 

 and but little in theological speculations, at least 

 among us Westerns, can be understood without 

 reference to Greece. 



