HISTORICAL ACCOUNT OF EVOLUTION THEORY II 
much palaeontological discovery had been made, before it was found 
that the facts from these sources all pointed to one general principle, 
and only one, that master-principle “organic evolution.” 
We shall now trace the development of the evolution idea from 
its inception among the Greeks to its present status, and shall first 
give a brief account of Greek evolution. 
EVOLUTION AMONG THE GREEKS 
The early Greek thinkers were sea people. ‘“‘ Along the shores and 
in the waters of the blue Aegean,”’ says Osborn, “teeming with what 
we now know to be the earliest and simplest forms of animals and 
plants, they founded their hypotheses as to the origin and succession 
of life. . .. . The spirit of the Greeks was vigorous and hopeful. 
Not pausing to test their theories by research, they did not suffer the 
disappointments and delays which come from one’s own efforts to 
wrest truths from Nature.” 
The Greeks were anticipators of Nature. Their speculations out- 
stripped the facts; in fact were usually made with “‘eyes closed to the 
facts.”” Their theories were inextricably bound up with current 
mythology, were naive, vague, and, from our modern point of view, 
ridiculous; yet they contained many grains of truth and were the 
germs out of which grew the saner ideas of subsequent thinkers. 
Thales (624-548 8B.c.) was the first of the Greeks to theorize about 
the origin of life. ‘He looked upon the great expanse of mother ocean 
and declared water to be the mother from which all things arose, and 
out of which they exist.” This idea anticipates the modern idea of 
the aquatic or marine origin of life, and also the present idea as to the 
indispensability of water in all vital processes. 
Anaximander (611-547 B.C.) has been called the prophet of 
Lamarck and of Darwin. While his theories were highly mythical in 
character, he conceived the idea of a gradual evolution from a formless 
or chaotic condition to one of organic coherence. He saw vaguely the 
idea of transformation of aquatic species into terrestrial, even deriving 
man from aquatic fishlike men (mythical mermen) who were able to 
emerge from the water only after they had undergone the necessary 
changes required for land life. This idea involves that of adaptation, 
one of the cornerstones of the modern evolutionary structure. 
Anaximenes (588-524 B.c.), a pupil of Anaximander, “found in air 
the cause of all things. Air, taking the form of soul, imparts life, 
motion, and thought to animals.”’ It is questionable whether this is a 
