62 FROM THE GREEKS TO DARWIN 



creatures were produced from the terrestrial 

 slime when animated by mind, but the 'mind' of 

 Anaxagoras is not mind in our sense of the word. 

 We may credit him with seeking to give a nat- 

 uraHstic explanation, but not in any modern 

 sense was he a naturalist. 



Biological Tendencies of Early Greek 

 Thought^ 



The Greeks sought natural explanations of 

 all origins, from the primordial atoms of Democ- 

 ritus to the final stages in the rise of man. All 

 of this intellectual curiosity and conjecture has 

 a very deep philosophical and racial bearing. It 

 lies at the very sources of Greek thought and 

 it partly explains the more serious anticipations 

 of modern biology and anatomy, and even of 

 anthropology, which arose among the Greeks as 

 early as the sixth century b. c. It classifies the 

 Greeks as men of the inquiring western and 

 northern mind and temper rather than of the 

 contemplative eastern or Oriental mind and tem- 

 per; the Greek spirit as restive, eager for new 

 truth, progressive, the Oriental spirit as docile, 

 stationary or retrogressive. The contrast between 

 the products of western and of eastern reason- 

 ing and imagination is brilliantly illustrated by a 



ICompare Osborn: Man Rises to Parnassus, chap. I. 



