DEMOCRITUS. ^j 



beings, which were incapable of feeding, reproduc- 

 ing, or defending themselves, were all produced 

 spontaneously, or directly from the earth. He thus 

 simply modified the abiogenetic hypothesis, and, by 

 happy conjecture, gave his theory a semblance of 

 modern Evolution, with four sparks of trutli, — 

 first, that the development of life was a gradual 

 process; second, that plants were evolved before 

 animals ; third, that imperfect forms were gradually 

 replaced (not succeeded) by perfect forms; fourth, i 

 that the natural cause of the production of perfect 

 forms was the extinction of the imperfect. 



Democritus (450- B.C.), the founder of the 

 Atomistic philosophy, and precursor of materialism, 

 studied and compared the principal organs of man 

 and the lower animals. Cuvier has called him the 

 first comparative anatomist. He did not, as Zeller 

 points out, further the Evolution idea, because his 

 teaching was not constructive in the way of advanc- 

 ing explanations of natural phenomena ; it was sim- 

 ply destructive as regards Teleology. He perceived 

 Design and admired the adaptations of Nature, but 

 left their origin unexplained. As Zeller observes, 

 Democritus had a gift for observing the purposeful 

 direction and the functions of bodily organs, and 

 was in every way inclined, one would think, to 

 explain these adaptations upon the principles of his 

 mechanical philosophy, for he stood far from a tcle- 

 ological conception of Nature, yet he advanced no 

 explanations. He denied that the Universe was 



