10 EVOLUTION, SOCIAL AND ORGANIC 



ing to him everything comes from and returns 

 to fire and "all things are in a state of flux like 

 a river/' Here is the intellectual ancestor of 

 Hegel with his great saying. "Nothing is, 

 everything is becoming." Herakleitos sagac- 

 iously observed: "You cannot step twice into 

 the same rivers, for fresh waters are ever flow- 

 ing in upon you." 



Parmenides, born at Elea about 515 B. C, 

 was poet and philosopher both, and insisted in 

 his hexameter verse that the universe is a 

 unity, which neither came out of nothing, nor 

 could, in any degree, pass away, thus anti- 

 cipating by over 2,000 years Lavoisier's 

 doctrine of the permanence of matter. 



Empedocles, of Akragas in Sicily, about the 

 same time, stated this great truth with still 

 greater force and clearness : "Fools ! — for they 

 have no far-reaching thoughts — who deem that 

 what before was not, comes into being or that 

 aught can perish and be utterly destroyed. For 

 it cannot be that aught can arise from what in 

 no way is, and it is impossible and unheard of 

 that what is should perish ; for it will always 

 be, wherever one may keep putting it." He 

 also endeavored to combine and reconcile the 

 ideas of some of his predecessors, teaching that 

 all things come from four roots— water, air, 

 fire and earth. 



