AMONG THE GREEKS 47 



suggestion and a literal prophet of some of the 

 eighteenth, rather than of the nineteenth, cen- 

 tury speculations upon Evolution. 



Anaximander's volume. Concerning Nature, 

 irepl (fivcjeoy;, written twenty-five hundred years 

 before our time, "was a variant of the old tra- 

 ditional cosmogonies. It told of how in the be- 

 ginning the earth was without form and void. It 

 sought to trace all things back to the Infinite, 

 TO d-rreLpov, to That which knows no • bounds of 

 space or time but is before all worlds, and to 

 whose bosom again all things, all worlds, re- 

 turn."^ 



Anaximander conceived of the earth as first 

 existing in a fluid state. From its gradual dry- 

 ing up all living creatures were produced, begin- 

 ning with men. These aquatic men first appeared 

 in the form of fishes in the water, and they 

 emerged from this element only after they had 

 progressed so far as to be able to further de- 

 velop and sustain themselves upon land. This is 

 rather analogous to the bursting of a chrysalis 

 than to progressive development from a simpler 

 to a more advanced structure by a change of or- 

 gans, yet a germ of the evolution idea is found 

 here. 



We find that Anaximander advanced some 



iD'Arcy Thompson: Natural Science. P. 137 of The Legacy of 

 Greece. 



