A HISTORY OF SCIENCE 



man's development we are not informed. Yet there is 

 one of his phrases which suggests without, perhaps, 

 quite proving that he was an evolutionist. This 

 phrase asserts, with insight that is fairly startling, 

 that man is the most intelligent of animals because he 

 has hands. The man who could make that assertion 

 must, it would seem, have had in mind the idea of the 

 development of intelligence through the use of hands 

 an idea the full force of which was not evident to 

 subsequent generations of thinkers until the time of 

 Darwin. 



Physical Speculations 



Anaxagoras is cited by Aristotle as believing that 

 "plants are animals and feel pleasure and pain, in- 

 ferring this because they shed their leaves and let 

 them grow again." The idea is fanciful, yet it suggests 

 again a truly philosophical conception of the unity of 

 nature. The man who could conceive that idea was 

 but little hampered by traditional conceptions. He 

 was exercising a rare combination of the rigidly scien- 

 tific spirit with the poetical imagination. He who 

 possesses these gifts is sure not to stop in his ques- 

 tionings of nature until he has found some thinkable 

 explanation of the character of matter itself. Anax- 

 agoras found such an explanation, and, as good luck 

 would have it, that explanation has been preserved. 

 Let us examine his reasoning in some detail. We 

 have already referred to the claim alleged to have been 

 made by Anaxagoras that snow is not really white, 

 but black. The philosopher explained his paradox, 

 we are told, by asserting that snow is really water, 



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