34 AMONG THE GREEKS. 



eighteenth century, rather than of the nineteenth 

 century, speculations upon Evolution. He con-; 

 ceived of the earth as first existing in a fluid^ 

 state. From its gradual drying up all living creat-j 

 ures were produced, beginning with men. Thesej 

 aquatic men first appeared in the form of fishes inj 

 the water, and they emerged from this element 

 only after they had progressed so far as to be able 

 to further develop and sustain themselves upon 

 land. This is rather analogous to the bursting of 

 a chrysalis, than to progressive development from a 

 simpler to a more advanced structure by a change 

 of organs, yet a germ of the Evolution idea is 

 found here. ^ 



We find that Anaximander advanced some rea- 

 sons for this view. He pointed to man's long help- 

 lessness after birth as one of the proofs that he 

 cannot be in his original condition. His hypothet- 

 ical ancestors of man were supposed to be first 

 encased in horny capsules, floating and feeding in 

 water ; as soon as these ' fish-men ' were in a con- 

 dition to emerge, they came on land, the capsule 

 burst, and they took their human form. Anaxi- 

 mander, naturally, is not staggered by the differ- 

 ences of internal organization necessary for aquatic 

 or terrestrial life, nor are we to translate the word 

 fxeTa/Biow as ' adaptation ' to new coi^itions of life, 

 but simply as implying that the original fish-men 

 persisted through their metamorphoses long enough 

 to reproduce true men on land. There is, how- 



