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Cii. II.] 



ANAXIMANDER. 



15 



A suggestion is then made that, as fish were the parents of 

 mankind, Anaximander may have objected to the use of them 

 as food. Such allusions to an ancient doctrine by no means 

 warrant us in assuming that Anaximander had really taught 



that men should abstain, from such a motive, from eating 



evidence that the 



curious as affording 



fish, but they are 

 Milesian philosopher really believed that men originally 

 sprang from fish. Unfortunately all the works of Anaxi- 

 mander, the pupil of Thales, are lost. He was born 610 

 years before Christ, and is said to have been the first who 

 left a philosophical treatise in writing. It is only from a few 

 brief citations scattered through the pages of later authors, 

 that we learn anything of his opinions. Eusebius quotes from 



■poyaareh or ' patchwork/ 



2 



$ 



e following words : ' Man, according to Anaximander, must 

 bve been born from animals of a different form (if dWoetScbv 

 mv) ; for whereas other animals easily get their food by 

 themselves, man alone requires long rearing; and no one 

 being such as he was originally, could have been pre- 

 served. 5 * 



In another work of Plutarch we read as follows : ' Anaxi- 



mander taught that the first animals (ra irpoyra £< 



were 



begotten in moisture, and were covered with prickly integu- 



ments, but as thev grew older they came 



& 



f Censorinus, in 



his work 



Natali 



mander, either fish, or animals very like fish, sprang from 

 heated water and earth, and that the human foetuses grew in 

 these animals to a state of puberty, so that when at length they 



men and women 



ceeded from them. J Full justice cannot, probably, be done 

 to the views of this ancient author by reference to the few 



which have alone come 



meagre fragments of his writings 



down to us, but we trace the same idea running through all 



ily, the peculiar helplessness of the human 



nam 



must 



been a connection between the embryonic condition of the 



* Euseb. Evayy*\iKr t s irpoirap. 1-8. 



f De placidis Philosophorum, book v. 



chap. 19. 



\ Censorinus De Die Natali IV. 



