Theodore Gomperz, in his work on 'Greek Thinkers' suggests several influences which may have given definiteness to Anaximander's speculations. For instance, the theory that the first animals were generated in sea-slime is traceable as far back as the Homeric poems, in which water and earth were supposed to be the elements of all organic bodies; and this presumption, the author remarks, 'may have been strengthened by the wealth of all kinds of life contained in the sea, not to mention the discovery of the remains of prehistoric marine monsters.'[1] As for the casting by primeval animals of their bristly integuments, the same writer observes: "It is likely enough that the analogous change sustained by some insect larvæ may have led him to this hypothesis. We can hardly doubt that he traced the forefathers of the terrestrial fauna from the descendants of these marine animals, thus obtaining a first vague glimpse of the modern theory of evolution." Another ingenious suggestion is that Anaximander, in seeking to explain the origin of human species, drew his analogy from the shark, which 'was popularly believed to swallow her young when they crept out of their capsules, to vomit them forth and swallow them again, and go on repeating the process till the young animal was strong enough to support an independent existence.'
Comment upon the various estimates here brought together appears unnecessary. It is enough that they all present Anaximander to us as a keen and deeply contemplative student of nature, who arrived at a dim adumbration of great truths. Evolutionist or not, as one will, the fact remains that his teachings contain germs of suggestion having high potentiality, which developed in the fulness of time into definite conceptions of organic, and even universal evolution. It is worth while for us to know that hints occur, in that far-off period, of theories of the survival of the fittest, of adaptation to environment, even of evolution as an explanation of the origin of all forms of life. That they remained only hints was inevitable without a knowledge of the essential facts of paleontology. Yet, after all is said, we must grant it was no small thing for Ionic genius to have given the first impulse to lines of thought which have profoundly influenced all departments of human understanding. Nor is it a small thing to realize that our questionings of nature, and indeed our very conceptions of life, re-echo at this day in surprisingly similar manner the questionings and conceptions that occupied the Hellenic mind more than twenty-five centuries ago. As intellectual pioneers, we owe them reverence for having first blazed the way along which all modern thought has followed.
- ↑ Numbers of such discoveries are mentioned in pagan literature, some of the remains being interpreted as 'bones of giants,' others as belonging to 'sea monsters.' As late as the second century of our era, Pausanias, who seems to have had a veritable passion for natural curiosities of all sorts, records having seen huge bones in various parts of Greece. Near Megalopolis, where he observed some of them, remains of mammoths and other large extinct animals have been found plentifully in modern times.
