14 READINGS IN EVOLUTION, GENETICS, AND EUGENICS 
“Children resemble their parents not only in congenital characters, 
but in those acquired later in life. For cases are known where parents 
have been marked by scars and children have shown traces of these 
scars at the same points; a case is also reported from Chalcedon in 
which a father had been branded with a letter, and the same letter 
somewhat blurred and not sharply defined appeared upon the arm of 
the child.” 
POST-ARISTOTELIANS 
With Aristotle the evolution idea reached a high watermark and 
thereafter the tide steadily declined. Pliny, Epicurus, Lucretius, and 
others kept the idea alive, but added nothing of importance to 
Aristotle’s contribution. : 
Lucretius (99-55 B.C.) appears to have been chiefly a follower of 
Empedocles in so far as his ideas as to the origin of animals are con- 
cerned. He ignored Aristotle and his much more advanced phi- 
losophy of Nature, finding the earlier, more mythical conceptions 
better suited to poetic expression. He was not truly an evolutionist, 
for he believed that all animals and plants arose fully formed from the 
earth. Lucretius is of importance chiefly as a retarding factor, for 
his ideas were accepted and admired even up to the eighteenth century; 
witness Milton’s immortal verse: 
““The Earth obey’d, and straight, 
Op’ning her fertile womb, teem’d at a birth 
Innumerous living creatures, perfect forms, 
Limb’d and full grown.” 
THE EARLY THEOLOGIANS 
The evolution idea made no progress from the time of Aristotle 
until the revival of learning in the Middle Ages. The chief inhibiting 
factor was the church, which favored traditional knowledge and the 
special-creation idea in its most literal form. Yet the early theo- 
logians, such as Gregory, Augustine, and Thomas Aquinas, were open- 
minded about the evolution idea and attempted to reconcile it with 
the scriptural account of creation. 
“Gregory of Nyssa (331-396 A.D.) taught,” says Osborn, “that 
Creation was potential. God imparted to matter its fundamental 
properties andlaws. The objects and completed forms of the Universe 
developed gradually out of chaotic material.”’ 
