380 THE HISTORY AND SCOPE OF ZOOLOGY IX 



study of Zoology, just as in its turn the study of 

 Zoology has reacted upon those conceptions. 



In this, as in other phases of mental development, 

 the ancient Greeks stand out in the most striking- 

 manner as possessing what is sometimes called the 

 modern spirit. The doctrine of evolution is formu- 

 lated in unmistakable terms by Heraclitus and other 

 philosophers of antiquity. Not only so, but the direct 

 examination of nature, including the various forms of 

 animal life, was practised by Aristotle and his dis- 

 ciples in a spirit which, though not altogether free 

 from prejudice, was yet far more like that which 

 actuated the founders of the Eoyal Society less than 

 three hundred years ago than anything which was 

 manifested in the two thousand years intervening 

 between that date and the time of Alexander the 

 Great. The study of Zoology in the Middle Ages 

 was simply a fantastic commentary on Aristotle and 

 the records of animals in the various books of the 

 Bible, elaborated as part of a peculiar system of 

 mystic philosophy, which has more analogy with the 

 fetichism and totem worship of savage races than with 

 any Greek or modern conceptions. So far as philo- 

 sophy affected the study of Zoology in the beginning 

 of the modern period, its influence was felt in the 

 general acceptance of what has been called the 

 Miltonic cosmogony, — namely, that interpretation of 

 the Mosaic writings which is set forth by the poet 

 Milton, and of which the characteristic is the concep- 

 tion of the creation of existing things, including living 

 things, nearly or just as they are, by a rapid succession 



