64 FROM THE GREEKS TO DARWIN 



. . . For the misfortunes that existed among mor- 

 tals, hear how I made them, that aforetime lived as 

 infants, rational and possessed of intellect. And I will 

 tell you, having no complaint against mankind, as 

 detailing the kindness of the boons which I bestowed 

 upon them: — they who at first seeing saw in vain, 

 hearing they heard not. But, like to the forms of 

 dreams, for a long time they used to huddle together 

 all things at random, and nought knew they about 

 brick-built and sun-ward houses, nor carpentry : but 

 they dwelt in the excavated earth like tiny emmets in 

 the sunless depths of caverns. And they had no sure 

 sign either of winter, or of flowery spring, or of 

 fruitful summer: but they used to do every thing 

 without judgment, until indeed I showed to them the 

 risings of the stars and their settings, hard to be dis- 

 cerned. ... In one brief sentence learn the whole 

 at once — All arts among the human race are from 

 Prometheus. 



According to the above citations from the 

 lonians, Eleatics and Physicists, the chief influ- 

 ence of the advance of the science of human anat- 

 omy on Greek thought between 600 and 400 b. c. 

 was to narrow the problem of the origin of man 

 as a whole as conceived by Anaximander and by 

 Anaxagoras and his followers, to the more inti- 

 mate anatomical problem of the origin of cer- 

 tain of the more conspicuous adaptations in man, 

 especially those in the skeleton and in the teeth. 

 The idea of sudden or fortuitous development. 



