56 FROM THE GREEKS TO DARWIN 



referred to by our own natural philosopher Wil- 

 liam Keith Brooks as follows*/ 



Herbert Spencer tells us that the segmentation of 

 the backbone is the inherited effect of fractures, 

 caused by bending, but Aristotle has shown (Parts 

 of Animals, I, i) that Empedocles and the ancient 

 writers err in teaching that the bendings to which 

 the backbone has been subjected are the cause of its 

 joints, since the thing to be accounted for is not the 

 presence of joints, but the fitness of the joints for 

 the needs of their possessor. 



Empedocles was an evolutionist only in so far 

 as he taught the gradual substitution of the less 

 by the more perfect forms of life. He had a dim 

 adumbration of the truth. There is no glimmer- 

 ing of slow development through the successive 

 modification of lower into higher forms. His be- 

 ings, which were incapable of feeding, reproduc- 

 ing, or defending themselves, were all produced 

 spontaneously, or directly from the earth. He 

 thus simply modified the abiogenetic hypothesis, 

 and, by happy conjecture, gave his theory a sem- 

 blance of modern Evolution, with four sparks of 

 truth: first, that the development of life was a 

 gradual process ; second, that plants were evolved 

 before animals ; third, that imperfect forms were 

 gradually replaced (not succeeded) by perfect 



1 William Keith Brooks: The Foundations of Zoology, p. 49. 



