INTRODUCTION AND GENERAL CONSIDERATIONS n 



idea when we consider their special veneration of ancestors. 

 And what are the gods and goddesses wherewith the polythe- 

 istic imagination peoples heaven and earth but personified 

 natural forces called into action at the creation of the universe 

 and afterwards worshipped under the names of heaven, earth, 

 light, etc. ? Nor need we despise this theogony since it is, in 

 reality, the dawn of approaching natural science. One step 

 further and a veil is lifted, revealing the venerable fathers of 

 natural philosophy in earnest meditation over the material 

 causes of the world and of man. 



First comes Anaxagoras who taught that the earth had 

 brought forth man and beast from the germs scattered over its 

 surface, until they were able to propagate their race alone ; the 

 world, however, was not formed out of the pre-existent matter 

 until that matter was associated with the force-giving spirit. 

 Thus Anaxagoras cannot escape Dualism any more than can 

 Archelaos of Miletus, or Empedocles whose derivation of the 

 organic world from the four elements is extremely interesting : 

 first came plants, then animals and men, whose different parts 

 at first grew separately out of the ground and were afterwards 

 set together by Eros (love, or elective affinity), the most fan- 

 tastic forms being thus accidentally evoked, destined to ultimate 

 destruction. The human being, moreover, was at first a form- 

 less mass of earth and water, cast up by subterranean fires and 

 attaining its perfect form only by slow degrees. Diametrically 

 opposed to the above were the views held by the old Ionian 

 naturalists who, according to the express testimony of Aris- 

 totle, admitted none of the various motive forces of matter. 

 Thales and Pherekydes assume water to be the first element 

 from which all else has proceeded ; Anaximander, infinite sub- 

 stance ; Anaximenes and Diogenes of Apollonia, air ; Hera- 

 clitus, fire (heat). Diogenes and Anaximander alone state their 

 convictions as to the origin of organisms, the former assuming 

 that the influence of the sun's heat caused the earth to produce 

 vegetable and animal organisms ; the latter, however, expressly 

 states that all animals, man included, originated in fish-like form 

 in the primeval ooze and only on the drying up of the earth 

 attained their present form. Neither the Atomists nor the 

 pantheistic Eleatic philosophers seem to have shared this view. 



