THE BEGINNINGS OF GREEK SCIENCE 



of the idea of organic evolution. According to this 

 idea, man developed from a fishlike ancestor, "growing 

 up as sharks do until able to help himself and then 

 coming forth on dry land." l The thought here ex- 

 pressed finds its germ, perhaps, in the Babylonian con- 

 ception that everything came forth from a chaos of 

 waters. Yet the fact that the thought of Anaximan- 

 der has come down to posterity through such various 

 channels suggests that the Greek thinker had got far 

 enough away from the Oriental conception to make 

 his view seem to his contemporaries a novel and in- 

 dividual one. Indeed, nothing we know of the Oriental 

 line of thought conveys any suggestion of the idea of 

 transformation of species, whereas that idea is dis- 

 tinctly formulated in the traditional views of Anaxi- 

 mander. 



