44 FROM THE GREEKS TO DARWIN 



The development of the Greeks from a child- 

 ish to a mature philosophy was a slow one, and 

 their thought upon the interpretation of Nature 

 passed through the above four phases as follows : 



First came the prehistoric mythological phase, 

 which left its imprints in guesses as to the strange 

 origin of monstrous forms of life, by the first 

 natural philosophers who endeavored to replace 

 mythological by natural phenomena. 



These pioneers contributed the spirit of the 

 second phase, seen in the naturalistic and earlier 

 materialistic schools of the pre-Socratic period, 

 suggesting Evolution, but neither conceiving of 

 Evolution by slow stages of development nor 

 seeking to explain Adaptation or Design in their 

 systems of natural causation. They could not, in 

 fact, speculate upon Design or teleology, as Zel- 

 ler very acutely observes in reply to Lange, un- 

 til the idea of Design as the result of a control- 

 ling Intelligence had arisen, and this idea was 

 first developed by Anaxagoras, the last of the 

 physicists. 



Anaxagoras was followed by Socrates, who 

 enlarged the theistic or supernatural principle in 

 Design, which in the succeeding natural philoso- 

 phy of Plato and in the natural history of Aris- 

 totle inspired the third or teleological phase of 

 thought. 



Then came the fourth phase, which was a 



