58 FROM THE GREEKS TO DARWIN 



the universe, he yielded to popular prejudice so far 

 as to admit the existence of a class of beings, of the 

 same form as men, grander, composed of very subtle 

 atoms, less Hable to dissolution, but still mortal, 

 dwelling in the upper regions of air. . . . 



In the verse of Lucretius^ his monistic^ phi- 

 losophy is expressed as follows: 



But, now again to weave the tale begun, 

 All nature, then, as self -sustained, consists 

 Of twain of things : of bodies and of void 

 In which they're set, and where they're moved 

 around. 



Bodies, again. 

 Are partly primal germs of things, and partly 

 Unions deriving from the primal germs. 



• •«••••• 



So primal germs have solid singleness. 

 Nor otherwise could they have been conserved 

 Through aeons and infinity of time 

 For the replenishment of wasted worlds. 



Cuvier has termed Democritus the first com- 

 parative anatomist. He did not, as Zeller points 

 out, further the evolution idea, because his teach- 



iLucretius: Of the Nature of Things. Book I, 418-560. Trans- 

 lation by William EUery Leonard. 



2 Monism (from Gr. (xovos, alone), the philosophic view of the 

 world which holds that there is but one form of reality, whether 

 that be material or spiritual. . . . Haeckel's monism is mere ma- 

 terialism dignified by a higher title.— Enc. Brit., vol. 18, p. 722. 



