34 FROM THE GREEKS TO DARWIN 



ment of another, now known as the law of Econ- 

 omy of Growth, was also perceived by Aristotle, 

 but was first clearly stated by Goethe in 1807, 

 and by St. Hilaire as the principle of 'halance- 

 menf in 1818. Aristotle, following Democritus, 

 was strongly impressed with the principle of 

 adaptation, or the wonderful fitness of certain 

 structures for certain ends, and adaptation, with 

 all its beautiful manifestations in Nature, has al- 

 ways been the focus of the differences between 

 the Special Creationists and the Evolutionists. 

 Degeneration, or the gradual decline of or- 

 gans and structures in form and usefulness, does 

 not appear to have been perceived by Aristotle, 

 although in his analysis of "movement" he em- 

 ploys a very similar idea in connection with de- 

 velopment. We first meet with degeneration as 

 part of an explanation of the origin of species 

 in the writings of Linnaeus and Buffon in the 

 eighteenth century; but the idea of degeneration 

 itself was much older, because we find it ex- 

 pressed in a passage of criticism of Sylvius upon 

 Vesalius. Vesalius (1514-1564) had brought the 

 charge against Galen (131-200) that his work 

 could not have been founded upon the human 

 body, because he had described an intermaxil- 

 lary bone. This bone, Vesalius observed, is found 

 in the lower animals but not in man. Syl- 

 vius (1614-1672) defended Galen warmly, and 



