CHAPTER XI. 

 DIVERGENCE. 



The classification or orderly arrangement of living 

 things according to structural simplicity and complexity 

 seems to have been early followed by the deduction 

 that the simpler forms appearing first, .the complex 

 forms descended from them by evolution. Such ideas 

 are very old and can be found in the Greek philosophy 

 of nearly two thousand five hundred years ago. 



Anaximander of Miletus (B. c. 611), his disciple 

 Anaximenes (528 B. c.), Heraclitus of Ephesus, Pythag- 

 oras of Samas (B. c. 582), Parmenides of Elea (B. c. 

 515) and Empedocles of Agrigentum (B. c. 500 (?)), 

 all busied themselves with cosmical speculation and 

 offered various evolutionary hypotheses for the genesis 

 of our planet. Empedocles went a step farther and 

 speculated upon the origin of the living beings that 

 people the earth. He believed that "plants first sprang 

 from the earth while the latter was still in process of 

 development. After them came the animals, their 

 different parts having first formed themselves independ- 

 ently and then been joined by love; subsequently the 

 ordinary method of reproduction took the place of this 

 original generation. At first eyes, arms, etc., existed 

 separately; as the result of their combination arose many 

 monstrosities which perished; those combinations which 

 were capable of subsisting, persisted and propagated 

 themselves." 



Aristotle of Stageiros in Thrace (384 B. c.), the first 

 of the physiologists, taught vaguely that there was a 

 gradual succession of life forms from the less to the 

 more perfect, but seems to have believed that they were 

 separate creations. 



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