Empedocles assures us that "many heads grow up without necks, and
arms were wandering about, necks bereft of shoulders, and eyes
roamed about alone with no foreheads."[16] This chaotic
condition, so the poet dreamed, led to the union of many
incongruous parts, producing "creatures with double faces,
offspring of oxen with human faces, and children of men with oxen
heads." But out of this chaos came, finally, we are led to infer,
a harmonious aggregation of parts, producing ultimately the
perfected organisms that we see. Unfortunately the preserved
portions of the writings of Empedocles do not enlighten us as to
the precise way in which final evolution was supposed to be
effected; although the idea of endless experimentation until
natural selection resulted in survival of the fittest seems not
far afield from certain of the poetical assertions. Thus: "As
divinity was mingled yet more with divinity, these things (the
various members) kept coming together in whatever way each might
chance." Again: "At one time all the limbs which form the body
united into one by love grew vigorously in the prime of life; but
yet at another time, separated by evil Strife, they wander each
in different directions along the breakers of the sea of life.
Just so is it with plants, and with fishes dwelling in watery
halls, and beasts whose lair is in the mountains, and birds borne
on wings."[17]

All this is poetry rather than science, yet such imaginings could
come only to one who was groping towards what we moderns should
term an evolutionary conception of the origins of organic life;
and however grotesque some of these expressions may appear, it
must be admitted that the morphological ideas of Empedocles, as
above quoted, give the Sicilian philosopher a secure place among
the anticipators of the modern evolutionist.



VII. GREEK SCIENCE IN THE EARLY ATTIC PERIOD

We have travelled rather far in our study of Greek science, and
yet we have not until now come to Greece itself. And even now,
the men whose names we are to consider were, for the most part,
born in out- lying portions of the empire; they differed from the
others we have considered only in the fact that they were drawn
presently to the capital. The change is due to a most interesting
sequence of historical events. In the day when Thales and his
immediate successors taught in Miletus, when the great men of the
Italic school were in their prime, there was no single undisputed
Centre of Greek influence. The Greeks were a disorganized company
of petty nations, welded together chiefly by unity of speech; but
now, early in the fifth century B.C., occurred that famous attack
upon the Western world by the Persians under Darius and his son
and successor Xerxes. A few months of battling determined the
fate of the Western world. The Orientals were hurled back; the
glorious memories of Marathon, Salamis, and Plataea stimulated
the patriotism and enthusiasm of all children of the Greek race.
The Greeks, for the first time, occupied the centre of the
historical stage; for the brief interval of about half a century
the different Grecian principalities lived together in relative
harmony. One city was recognized as the metropolis of the loosely
bound empire; one city became the home of culture and the Mecca
towards which all eyes turned; that city, of course, was Athens.
For a brief time all roads led to Athens, as, at a later date,
they all led to Rome. The waterways which alone bound the widely
scattered parts of Hellas into a united whole led out from Athens
and back to Athens, as the spokes of a wheel to its hub. Athens
was the commercial centre, and, largely for that reason, it
became the centre of culture and intellectual influence also. The
wise men from the colonies visited the metropolis, and the wise
Athenians went out to the colonies. Whoever aspired to become a
leader in politics, in art, in literature, or in philosophy, made
his way to the capital, and so, with almost bewildering
suddenness, there blossomed the civilization of the age of
Pericles; the civilization which produced aeschylus, Sophocles,
Euripides, Herodotus, and Thucydides; the civilization which made
possible the building of the Parthenon.


ANAXAGORAS

Sometime during the early part of this golden age there came to
Athens a middle-aged man from Clazomenae, who, from our present
stand-point, was a more interesting personality than perhaps any
other in the great galaxy of remarkable men assembled there. The
name of this new-comer was Anaxagoras. It was said in after-time,
we know not with what degree of truth, that he had been a pupil
of Anaximenes. If so, he was a pupil who departed far from the
teachings of his master. What we know for certain is that
Anaxagoras was a truly original thinker, and that he became a
close friend--in a sense the teacher--of Pericles and of
Euripides. Just how long he remained at Athens is not certain;
but the time came when he had made himself in some way
objectionable to the Athenian populace through his teachings.
Filled with the spirit of the investigator, he could not accept
the current conceptions as to the gods. He was a sceptic, an
innovator. Such men are never welcome; they are the chief factors
in the progress of thought, but they must look always to
posterity for recognition of their worth; from their
contemporaries they receive, not thanks, but persecution.
Sometimes this persecution takes one form, sometimes another; to
the credit of the Greeks be it said, that with them it usually
led to nothing more severe than banishment. In the case of
Anaxagoras, it is alleged that the sentence pronounced was death;


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