i8o THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



better expressions of the essence of the modern doctrine of evo- 

 lution can be found than are presented by some of his pithy 

 aphorisms and striking metaphors.* Indeed, many of my present 



of life in the Asiatic colonies. The Ionian polities had passed through the whole gamut of 

 social and political changes, from patriarchal and occasionally oppressive kingship to rowdy 

 and still more burdensome mobship no doubt with infinitely eloquent and copious argu- 

 mentation on both sides at every stage of their progress toward that arbitrament of force 

 which settles most political questions. The marvelous speculative faculty, latent in the 

 Ionian, had come in contact with Mesopotamian, Egyptian, Phoenician theologies and cos- 

 mogonies ; with the illuminati of Orphism and the fanatics and dreamers of the Mysteries ; 

 possibly with Buddhism and Zoroasterism ; possibly even with Judaism. And it has been 

 observed that the mutual contradictions of antagonistic supernaturalisms are apt to play a 

 large part among the generative agencies of naturalism. 



Thus, various external influences may have contributed to the rise of philosophy among 

 the Ionian Greeks of the sixth century. But the assimilative capacity of the Greek mind 

 its power of Hellenizing whatever it touched has here worked so effectually that, so far as 

 I can learn, no indubitable traces of such extraneous contributions are now allowed .to exist 

 by the most authoritative historians of philosophy. Nevertheless, I think it must be ad- 

 mitted that the coincidences between the Heracleito-stoical doctrines and those of the older 

 Hindu philosophy are extremely remarkable. In both the cosmos pursues an eternal suc- 

 cession of cyclical changes. The great year, answering to the Kalpa, covers an entire cycle 

 from the origin of the universe as a fluid to its dissolution in fire " Humor initium, ignis 

 exitus mundi," as Seneca has it. In both systems there is immanent in the cosmos a source 

 of energy, Brahma, or the Logos, which works according to fixed laws. The individual 

 soul is an efflux of this world-spirit, and returns to it. Perfection is attainable only by in- 

 dividual effort through ascetic discipline, and is rather a state of painlessness than of hap- 

 piness, if indeed it can be said to be a state of anything save the negation of perturbing 

 emotion. The hatchment motto " In Ccelo Quies " would serve both Hindu and Stoic, and 

 absolute quiet is not easily distinguishable from annihilation. 



Zoroasterism, which geographically occupies a position intermediate between Hellenism 

 and Hinduism, agrees with the latter in recognizing the essential evil of the cosmos, but 

 differs from both in its intensely anthropomorphic personification of the two antagonistic 

 principles, to the one of which it ascribes all the good, and to the other all the evil. In 

 fact, it assumes the existence of two worlds, one good and one bad ; the latter created by 

 the evil power for the purpose of damaging the former. The existing cosmos is a mere 

 mixture of the two, and the " last judgment " is a root and branch extirpation of the work 

 of Ahriman. 



* There is no snare in which the feet of a modern student of ancient lore are more easily 

 entangled than that which is spread by the similarity of the language of antiquity to mod- 

 ern modes of expression. I do not presume to interpret the obscurest of Greek philoso- 

 phers ; all I wish is to point out that his words, in the sense accepted by competent inter- 

 preters, fit modern ideas singularly well. 



So far as the general theory of evolution goes, there is no difficulty. The aphorism 

 about the river ; the figure of the child playing on the shore ; the kingship and fatherhood 

 of strife, seem decisive. The 6Sbs &vu K&TW fj.ii] expresses with singular aptness the cyclical 

 aspect of the one process of organic evolution in individual plants and animals ; yet it may 

 be a question whether the Heracleitean strife included any distinct conception of the strug- 

 gle for existence. Again, it is tempting to compare the part played by the Heracleitean 

 " fire " with that ascribed by the moderns to heat, or rather to that cause of motion of 

 which heat is one expression ; and a little ingenuity might find a foreshadowing of the doc- 

 trine of the conservation of energy in the saying that all the things are changed into fire 

 and fire into all things, as gold into goods and goods into gold. 



