EARLY GREEK PHILOSOPHERS IN ITALY 



century science. Empedocles expresses the idea in 

 these words: "Hair, and leaves, and thick feathers of 

 birds, are the same thing in origin, and reptile scales 

 too on strong limbs. But on hedgehogs sharp-pointed 

 hair bristles on their backs." " That the idea of trans- 

 mutation of parts, as well as of mere homology, was in 

 mind is evidenced by a very remarkable sentence in 

 which Aristotle asserts, "Empedocles says that finger- 

 nails rise from sinew from hardening." Nor is this 

 quite all, for surely we find the germ of the Lamarckian 

 conception of evolution through the transmission of 

 acquired characters in the assertion that "many char- 

 acteristics appear in animals because it happened to 

 be thus in their birth, as that they have such a spine 

 because they happen to be descended from one that 

 bent itself backward." 15 Aristotle, in quoting this 

 remark, asserts, with the dogmatism which charac- 

 terizes the philosophical commentators of every age, 

 that " Empedocles is wrong," in making this assertion; 

 but Lamarck, who lived twenty-three hundred years 

 after Empedocles, is famous in the history of the doc- 

 trine of evolution for elaborating this very idea. 



It is fair to add, however, that the dreamings of 

 Empedocles regarding the origin of living organisms 

 led him to some conceptions that were much less lu- 

 minous. On occasion, Empedocles the poet got the 

 better of Empedocles the scientist, and we are pre- 

 sented with a conception of creation as grotesque as 

 that which delighted the readers of Paradise Lost at a 

 later day. Empedocles assures us that " many heads 

 grow up without necks, and arms were wandering 

 about, necks bereft of shoulders, and eyes roamed 



