8 THE MEANING OF EVOLUTION 



passage or other should show that there had come 

 to his mind at least a glimmer of the thought that 

 was later to develop into the great idea which the 

 modern world calls evolution. 



Among the earliest of these was Anaximander, 

 who lived 600 years before Christ. He thought that 

 the earth was at first a fluid. Gradually this fluid 

 began to dry and grow thicker, and here and there, 

 where it thickened most, dry land appeared. When 

 this dry land had become firm enough to serve as 

 his home, man came up from the water in the form 

 of a fish. Slowly and gradually the fish, struggling 

 about on the land, gained for himself the limbs and 

 members he needed for his new situation and devel- 

 oped into a man. After him other animals came up 

 in much the same fashion, then the plants, until the 

 whole world was clothed with its present inhabitants. 



One hundred and fifty years later Empedocles an- 

 nounced a new thought. He said that in the begin- 

 nings there were all sorts of strange, incomplete, and 

 mis jointed monsters which swarmed upon the earth, 

 having sprung up out of the earth itself. Each was 

 a chaos of the limbs which afterward were to belong 

 to other animals which needed them more. Slowly 

 and gradually an interchanging came about by which 

 appropriate limbs fastened themselves to the proper 

 animals. The last of these misjointed creatures is the 



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