94 FROM THE GREEKS TO DARWIN 



cupied bj keen-sighted intelligence, . . . but be- 

 cause after trying motions and unions of every kind, 

 at length they fall into arrangements, such as those 

 out of which this our sum of things has been formed, 

 . . . and the earth, fostered by the heat of the sun, 

 begins to renew this produce, and the race of living 

 things to come up and flourish. 



Zeller rightly contends that Lucretius did not 

 really apply the Empedocles theory to the origin 

 of adaptations in the modern Darwinian sense, 

 for his treatment is simply a poetical restatement 

 of Empedocles' own words, unmodified by the 

 great advances of science. The creations which, 

 according to Lucretius, were thus eliminated 

 from the earth were the mythical monsters, such 

 as the centaurs and the chimseras. 



Lucretius places the mechanical conception of 

 Nature over against the teleological ; we find that 

 he does not carry his conception of Nature as 

 Aristotle does into the law of gradual develop- 

 ment of organic life, but like Parmenides, De- 

 mocritus, and Anaxagoras, he conceives of ani- 

 mals as arising by abiogenesis directly from the 

 earth :^ 



Plants and trees arise directly out of the earth 

 in the same manner that feathers and hair grow 

 from the bodies of animals. Living beings certainly 

 have not fallen down from heaven, nor, as Anaxago- 



iBook V, 780. 



