48 FROM THE GREEKS TO DARWIN 



reasons for this view. He pointed to man's long 

 helplessness after birth as one of the proofs that 

 he cannot be in his original condition. His hypo- 

 thetical ancestors of man were supposed to be 

 first encased in horny capsules, floating and feed- 

 ing in water ; as soon as these 'fish-men' were in a 

 condition to emerge, they came on land, the cap- 

 sule burst, and they took their human form. 

 Anaximander, naturally, is not restrained by the 

 differences of internal organization necessary for 

 aquatic or terrestrial life, nor are we to translate 

 the word /JLera^covv as 'adaptation' to new condi- 

 tions of life, but simply as implying that the 

 original fish-men persisted through their meta- 

 morphoses long enough to reproduce true men 

 on land. There is, however, the dim notion here 

 of survival or persistence throughout decidedly 

 trying circumstances, which was greatly devel- 

 oped later by Empedocles. In the fragments of 

 Anaximander's teachings we find that he does 

 not speculate upon the origin of other land ani- 

 mals, or intimate that he has any notion of the 

 development of higher from lower organisms, ex- 

 cept in the case of man. As to the origin of life 

 in the beginning, he was the first teacher of the 

 doctrine of abiogenesis, believing that eels and 

 other aquatic forms are directly produced from 

 lifeless matter. 



Anaximander's explanation of the metamor- 



