52 FROM THE GREEKS TO DARWIN 



Empedocles (495-435 b. c.) 



Empedocles of Agrigentum^ took a great 

 stride beyond his predecessors and may justly be 

 called the father of the evolution idea. He was 

 not only a poet and musician but he made the 

 first observations in embryology which are re- 

 corded. Among his first physical principles we 

 find the four elements — fire, air, water, and earth 

 — played upon by two ultimate forces, a combin- 

 ing force, or love, and a separating force, or hate. 

 He believed in abiogenesis, or spontaneous gen- 

 eration, as the explanation of the origin of life, 

 but that Nature does not produce the lower and 

 higher forms simultaneously or without an ef- 

 fort. Plant life came first, and animal life devel- 

 oped only after a long series of trials. After the 

 first formation of the earth, and before it was 

 surrounded by the sun, plants arose, and from 

 their budding forth came animals. But this origin 

 he believed to be a very gradual process, for even 

 now the living world presents a series, of incom- 

 plete products. All organisms arose through the 

 fortuitous play of the two great forces of Na- 

 ture upon the four elements. Thus animals first 

 appeared, not as complete individuals, but as 

 parts of individuals — heads without necks, arms 



iThe site of modern Girgenti, Sicily. 



