LUCRETIUS. 6 1 



conception of Nature. Lucretius was also familiar 

 with Empedocles, and, as we have seen, puts his 

 teachings in verse. Here, again, is a difference of 

 opinion between Lange and Zeller. Lange refers 

 to the end of the first book, in which he claims that 

 Lucretius briefly announces the magnificent doc- 

 trine first proposed by Empedocles, that all the 

 adaptations to be found in the Universe, and espe- 

 cially in organic life, are merely special cases of the 

 infinite possibilities of mechanical events. Thus 

 Lucretius says : — 



" For verily not by design do the first beginnings of things 

 station themselves each in his right place, occupied by keen- 

 sighted intelligence, . . . but because after trying motions and 

 unions of every kind, at length they fall into arrangements, such 

 as those out of which this our sum of things has been formed, . . . 

 and the earth, fostered by the heat of the sun, begins to renew 

 this produce, and the race of living things to come up and 

 flourish." 



Zeller rightly contends that Lucretius did not 

 really apply the Empedocles theory to the origin 

 of adaptations as in the modern Darwinian sense ; 

 for his treatment is simply a poetical restatement of 

 Empedocles' own words, unmodified by the great 

 advances of science. The creations which, accord- 

 ing to Lucretius, were thus eliminated from the 

 earth were the mythical monsters, such as the 

 Centaurs and the Chimeras. 



Lucretius places the mechanical conception of 

 Nature over against the teleological ; we find that 



