AMONG THE GREEKS 49 



phosis of 'aquatic men' into 'land men' is the first 

 dim adumbration of a belief in slow anatomical 

 transformation rather than in the immediate at- 

 tainment of anatomical perfection, as well as a 

 suggestion of the deep significance of infantile 

 characters as pointing back to ancestral history 

 — a notion which has expanded into the so-called 

 'biogenetic law.' This principle of the recapitula- 

 tion of the adaptations of our more or less re- 

 mote ancestors, fully expanded by Louis Agassiz, 

 Ernst Haeckel and others, teaches that many of 

 the stages of body and mind and many of the 

 characters of the body before birth give an ab- 

 breviated history of man's remotest and more im- 

 mediate ancestry. 



Grotesque as these ideas of Anaximander's 

 are, they indicate a marked advance over the au- 

 tochthonous myths of earlier times, according to 

 which man grew, like a plant, directly out of the 

 earth; for we find here an attempt to explain 

 human origin upon the basis of natural analogies. 

 Unfortunately, so little knowledge of Anaxi- 

 mander's work is left us that we can obtain only 

 these vague glimpses of his opinions. 



Anaa^imenes (588-524 b. c.) 



Anaximenes, pupil of Anaximander, found in 

 air the cause of all things. Air, taking the form 



