3 EVOLUTION, SOCIAL AND ORGANIC 



causes, looking, as Professor Butcher aptly 

 remarks "on each fresh gain of earth as so 

 much robbery of heaven." 



The Greeks very largely discarded the theo- 

 logical mind, peopled with its pious phantasms, 

 and sought to probe into the nature of the 

 material universe. This is why we discover a 

 fairly distinct, and sometimes startlingly clear 

 "adumbration" of the theory of evolution 

 running like a chain of gold through the im- 

 mortal fragments of their greatest thinkers. 



What is it that really is, and what that only 

 seems to be? What is real, and what is only 

 apparent? This is the theme which Greek phi- 

 losophy has in common with modern thought, 

 and this is why the remnants of Greek litera- 

 ture are so precious in the twentieth century. 



Thales, of Miletus, in Asia Minor, is con- 

 ceded to have been the founder of Greek phi- 

 losophy. "He asserted water to be the principle 

 of all things," says Diogenes Laertius, and he 

 regarded all life as coming from water, a po- 

 sition by no means foreign to modern science. 



Anaximander, also a Milesian and a younger 

 contemporary of Thales, who like him flour- 

 ished between 500 and 600 B. C., said that the 

 material cause of all things was the Infinite. 

 "It is neither water nor any other of what are 

 now called the elements, but a substance 



