204 FROM THE GREEKS TO DARWIN 



doctrine of the spontaneous origin of life, which 

 we have seen revived during the eighteenth cen- 

 tury in so many extravagant forms, but which 

 Darwin restricts to the lowest organisms: 



Hence without parents, by spontaneous birth, 

 Rise the first specks of animated earth. 



Organic life beneath the shoreless waves 

 Was born and nurs'd in ocean's pearly caves; 

 First forms minute, unseen by spheric glass, 

 Move on the mud, or pierce the watery mass ; 

 These, as successive generations bloom. 

 New powers acquire and larger limbs assume ; 

 Whence countless groups of vegetation spring. 

 And breathing realms of fin and feet and wing. 



Then, in the transition from sea to dry land, 

 came the amphibious, and finally the terrestrial, 

 forms of life. Gradually new powers are ac- 

 quired. In these metamorphoses, Darwin does not 

 revive the fancies of such writers as de Maillet, 

 but illustrates his views by changes such as those 

 seen in the development from the tadpole to the 

 frog. 



Passing on, he speaks of cross-fertilization, 

 and finally reaches the central problem of the 

 origin of man, in several lines of which he antici- 

 pates the work of his grandson, Charles Darwin. 

 We here find a very interesting section in this 



