AMONG THE GREEKS 75 



In his treatise upon the Generation of Ani- 

 mals^ we find him discussing the heredity theo- 

 ries of Hippocrates and Herach'tus, which were 

 similar to those of Democritus, and to the later 

 pangenesis of Darwin. 



Aristotle, however, does not accept the pan- 

 genesis hypothesis of heredity, nor does he sug- 

 gest the inheritance of normal functional modi- 

 fications. In his History of Animals^ he refers to 

 the inheritance of mutilations, remarking that 

 such transmission is not infrequent. He says in 

 effect, as to inherited mutilations: 



Children resemble their parents not only in con- 

 genital characters, but in those acquired later in life. 

 For cases are known where parents have been marked 

 by scars, and children have shown traces of these 

 scars at the same points; a case is reported from 

 Chalcedon in which a father had been branded with 

 a letter, and the same letter somewhat blurred and 

 not sharply defined appeared upon the arm of his 

 child. 



We can pass leniently by errors which are 

 strewn among such grand contributions to biol- 

 ogy and to the very foundation stones of the 

 evolution idea. Aristotle showed practical ig- 

 norance of human anatomy and physiology; he 

 failed to establish a natural classification ; he also 



II, Chap. XVII. 

 2Book VII, Chap. VI. 



