Pioneers of Evolution from Thales to Huxley. Edward Clodd

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СКАЧАТЬ by any analogy we are acquainted with, ascribes a greater continuity to organized matter than we can readily admit. These embryons … must possess a greater degree of minuteness than that which was ascribed to the devils who tempted St. Anthony, of whom twenty thousand were said to have been able to dance a saraband on the point of a needle without the least incommoding each other.”

      Although no theistic element could be extracted by the theologians of the early Christian Church from the systems of Empedocles and Democritus, thereby securing them a share in the influence exercised by the great Stagirite, they were formative powers in Greek philosophy, and, moreover, have “come by their own” in these latter days. Their chief representative in what is known as the Post-Aristotelian period is Epicurus, who was born at Samos, 342 BC As with Zeno, the founder of the Stoic school, his teaching has been perverted, so that his name has become loosely identified with indulgence in gross and sensual living. He saw in pleasure the highest happiness, and therefore advocated the pursuit of pleasure to attain happiness, but he did not thereby mean the pursuit of the unworthy. Rather did he counsel the following after pure, high, and noble aims, whereby alone a man could have peace of mind. It is not hard to see that in the minds of men of low ideals the tendency towards passivity which lurked in such teaching would aid their sliding into the pursuit of mere animal enjoyment; hence the gross and limited association of the term Epicurean. Epicurus accepted the theory of Leucippus, and applied it all round. The fainéant gods, who dwell serenely indifferent to human affairs, and about whom men should therefore have no dread; all things, whether dead or living, even the ideas that enter the mind; are alike composed of atoms. He also accepted the theory broached by Empedocles as to the survival of fit and capable forms after life had arrived at these through the processes of spontaneous generation and the production of monstrosities. Adopting the physical speculations of these forerunners, he made them the vehicle of didactic and ethical philosophies which inspired the production of the wonderful poem of Lucretius.

      Between this great Roman and Epicurus—a period of some two centuries—there is no name of sufficient prominence to warrant attention. The decline of Greece had culminated in her conquest by the semi-barbarian Mummius, and in her consequent addition to the provinces of the Roman Empire. What life lingered in her philosophy within her own borders expired with the loss of freedom, and the work done by the Pioneers of Evolution in Greece was to be resumed elsewhere. In the few years of the pre-Christian period that remained the teaching of Empedocles, and of Epicurus as the mouthpiece of the atomic theory, was revived by Lucretius in his De Rerum Natura. Of that remarkable man but little is recorded, and the record is untrustworthy. He was probably born 99 BC, and died—by his own hand, Jerome says, but of this there is no proof—in his forty-fourth year. It is difficult, taking up his wonderful poem, to resist the temptation to make copious extracts from it, since, even through the vehicle of Mr. Munro’s exquisite translation, it is probably little known to the general reader in these evil days of snippety literature. But the temptation must be resisted, save in moderate degree.

      With the dignity which his high mission inspires, Lucretius appeals to us in the threefold character of teacher, reformer, and poet. “First, by reason of the greatness of my argument, and because I set the mind free from the close-drawn bonds of superstition; and next because, on so dark a theme, I compose such lucid verse, touching every point with the grace of poesy.” As a teacher he expounds the doctrines of Epicurus concerning life and nature; as a reformer he attacks superstition; as a poet he informs both the atomic philosophy and its moral application with harmonious and beautiful verse swayed by a fervour that is akin to religious emotion.

      Discussing at the outset various theories of origins, and dismissing these, notably that which asserts that things came from nothing—“for if so, any kind might be born of anything, nothing would require seed,” Lucretius proceeds to expound the teaching of Leucippus and other atomists as to the constitution of things by particles of matter ruled in their movements by unvarying laws. This theory he works all round, explaining the processes by which the atoms unite to carry on the birth, growth, and decay of things, the variety of which is due to variety of form of the atoms and to differences in modes of their combination; the combinations being determined by the affinities or properties of the atoms themselves, “since it is absolutely decreed what each thing can and what it cannot do by the conditions of Nature.” Change is the law of the universe; what is, will perish, but only to reappear in another form. Death is “the only immortal”; and it is that and what may follow it which are the chief tormentors of men. “This terror of the soul, therefore, and this darkness, must be dispelled, not by the rays of the sun or the bright shafts of day, but by the outward aspect and harmonious plan of Nature.” Lucretius explains that the soul, which he places in the centre of the breast, is also formed of very minute atoms of heat, wind, calm air, and a finer essence, the proportions of which determine the character of both men and animals. It dies with the body, in support of which statement Lucretius advances seventeen arguments, so determined is he to “deliver those who through fear of death are all their lifetime subject to bondage.”

      These themes fill the first three books. In the fourth he grapples with the mental problems of sensation and conception, and explains the origin of belief in immortality as due to ghosts and apparitions which appear in dreams. “When sleep has prostrated the body, for no other reason does the mind’s intelligence wake, except because the very same images provoke our minds which provoke them when we are awake, and to such a degree that we seem without a doubt to perceive him whom life has left, and death and earth gotten hold of. This Nature constrains to come to pass because all the senses of the body are then hampered and at rest throughout the limbs, and cannot refute the unreal by real things.”

      In the fifth book Lucretius deals with origins—of the sun, the moon, the earth (which he held to be flat, denying the existence of the antipodes); of life and its development; and of civilization. In all this he excludes design, explaining everything as produced and maintained by natural agents, “the masses, suddenly brought together, became the rudiments of earth, sea, and heaven, and the race of living things.” He believed in the successive appearance of plants and animals, but in their arising separately and directly out of the earth, “under the influence of rain and the heat of the sun,” thus repeating the old speculations of the emergence of life from slime, “wherefore the earth with good title has gotten and keeps the name of mother.” He did not adopt Empedocles’s theory of the “four roots of all things,” and he will have none of the monsters—the hippogriffs, chimeras, and centaurs—which form a part of the scheme of that philosopher. These, he says, “have never existed,” thus showing himself far in advance of ages when unicorns, dragons, and such-like fabled beasts were seriously believed to exist. In one respect, more discerning than Aristotle, he accepts the doctrine of the survival of the fittest as taught by the sage of Agrigentum. For he argues that since upon “the increase of some Nature set a ban, so that they could not reach the coveted flower of age, nor find food, nor be united in marriage,” … “many races of living things have died out, and been unable to beget and continue their breed.” Lucretius speaks of Empedocles in terms scarcely less exaggerated than those which he applied to Epicurus. The latter is “a god” “who first found out that plan of life which is now termed wisdom, and who by tried skill rescued life from such great billows and such thick darkness and moored it in so perfect a calm and in so brilliant a light, … he cleared men’s breasts with truth-telling precepts, and fixed a limit to lust and fear, and explained what was the chief good which we all strive to reach.” As to Empedocles, “that great country (Sicily) seems to have held within it nothing more glorious than this man, nothing more holy, marvellous, and dear. The verses, too, of this godlike genius cry with a loud voice, and make known his great discoveries, so that he seems scarcely born of a mortal stock.”

      Continuing his speculations on the development of living things, Lucretius strikes out in bolder and original vein. The past history of man, he says, lies in no heroic or golden age, but in one of struggle out of savagery. Only when “children, by their coaxing ways, easily broke down the proud temper of their fathers,” did there arise the family ties out of which the wider social bond has grown, and softening and civilizing agencies begin their fair offices. In his battle for food СКАЧАТЬ