pedocles as to the survival of the fittest for he said that Empedocles believed in chance. Said Aristotle: "It rains not from chance, but from necessity." Had not his desire to emphasize the principle of law led him to reject this idea he would have outlined in all essentials the evolutionary theories of Darwin. Yet we must note the crudity and inconsistency of many of his ideas. Eels and flies might still arise from spontaneous generation. "Plants are evidently for the sake of animals and animals for the sake of man: thus Nature, which does nothing in vain, has done all things for the sake of man.

It was not accident that led these students and many others here unmentioned to see that the beginnings of life were probably in water or slime. They dwelt by the sea and were familiar with the fact that it sheltered many of the lower forms of life. They believed that life originated in its lowest forms directly from the earth, that it changed by a process of evolution. With Aristotle we reach the culmination of Greek thought.

It is evident that the Greeks combined considerable knowledge of the actual world with very shrewd speculation. They had gained a conception of gradual change from the simple to the complex. Their ideas of cause and law were gradually extended to natural phenomena such as rain, storm, lightning and even to the action of the gods themselves. They were rapidly approaching the idea of a "reign of law." But the Greek nation was tottering, and soon to fall. The Romans were interested in other problems and the only one even to maintain this scientific attitude was Lucretius (50 B. c.) whom Clodd calls the "first anthropologist."

The oriental idea of an almighty God who sits on high

1 OSBORN, H. F. From the Greeks to Darwin, p. 52.

and directs the universe, whose will is law and whose acts are not limited by law replaces the Greek philosophy. The earth which the Greeks were beginning to conceive of as a globe becomes a flat surface. Above is the sky supported at the edges in some fashion by pillars. The sky is the solid firmament often thought of as made of ice. Somewhere above the sky is heaven. The stars are taken out of a closet and hung nightly in the sky by God. The lower side of the earth was the "antipodes" and later on there was much discussion as to whether this was inhabited. The fact that such beings would have their feet above their heads even if they did not fall into space settled this question in the negative. Somewhere further down was hell, whose glowing colors were often reflected in the evening sky when the sun had passed beyond the edge of the world.

The early Christians were too busily employed either in maintaining existence on earth or getting ready for heaven to pay much attention to nature. Gradually the canon of the Bible took form. Early in the fourth century Lactantius, who amusingly declared that man was so named because made from the earth, "homo ex humo," struck the note which dominated theology for fifteen hundred years. The statements of the Bible, literally interpreted, are to be the final authority in all matters. This conception was fastened upon the church by the man who marks the end of the old era as well as the beginning of the new.

Augustine (A.D. 354-430) sought to harmonize Aristotle with the biblical accounts of creation. He did not accept the statements of Genesis as exact and did not hesitate to explain them. Yet in his commentary on Genesis he wrote: "Nothing is to be accepted save on the author

ity of scripture, since greater is that authority than all the powers of the human mind." 2 The origin of matter gave him trouble. Augustine said: "Although the world has been made of some material, that very same material must have been made out of nothing." 3 Hence all life developed out of nothing. He said further that the essence or seed of heaven, earth and life was created by God, not the finished product. There were two kinds of germs: (1) the visible, put directly by God into plants and animals, and (2) the invisible, which developed only under favorable conditions. "Certain very small animals may not have been created on the fifth and sixth days, but may have originated later from putrefying matter." 4 Man with his soul was the direct product of God, but other forms of life may have arisen gradually from the "casual energy and potency" of the seed. Independent and liberal as Augustine was, we find him holding to the conception that "all diseases of Christians" were caused by the devils common in the air, and interpreting the saying of Jesus "compel them to come in " " as a Divine warrant for the slaughter of heretics." 5

After Augustine the appeal was not to evidence and observation, but to authority. If new facts appeared they were denied or explained in conformity with old beliefs. With few exceptions for over a millennium men in Europe did not question the principle established by Augustine, while fire and the stake silenced those who were obstinate. By an appeal to supposed truth man did his best to prevent himself from discovering the real truth 2 WHITE, A. D. Warfare of Science with Theology, Vol. I, p. 25. 3 Ibid., p. 5.

4 CLODD, EDW. Pioneers of Evolution, p. 74.

5 Ibid., p. 75.

about the world in which he lived. Strange to say, the grim reality of this great struggle is dimly realized even today by the majority who call themselves educated. I can only hope that any one chancing to read this chapter may be moved to read Andrew D. White's "Warfare of Science with Theology" that he may gain a greater appreciation of the cost of his intellectual heritage.

The constant efforts to explain and interpret Genesis made necessary by new discoveries led to most interesting and amusing results. Ingenious speculation produced the idea that the world was instantly created and yet that the process took six days. Aquinas, the great follower of Aristotle and Augustine, refined this by saying that the essence was instantly created but the shaping took six days.

The Genesis account said that light and darkness appear on the first day although the sun and moon are not created till the fourth. This difficulty is circumvented by the idea that darkness and light are independent entities. As Ambrose said, "We must remember that the light of day is one thing and the light of the sun, moon and stars another—the sun by his rays appearing to add luster to the daylight. For before sunrise the day dawns, but is not in full refulgence, for the sun adds still further to its splendor."

If God was all-powerful and all on earth was designed for man, how was it that injurious animals were created? The answer was found to lie in the result of sin. Before Adam fell there was no sin, no suffering, no antagonism between different species. Bede said: "Thus fierce and poisonous animals were created for terrifying man (be6 WHITE, A. D. o. c., p. 13.

cause God foresaw that he would sin) in order that he might be made aware of the final punishment of hell." 7 Peter Lombard thought "no created things would have been hurtful to man had he not sinned: they became hurtful for the sake of terrifying and punishing vice or of proving and perfecting virtue: they were created harmless and on account of sin became hurtful." Wesley wrote: None of these attempted to devour or in any wise hurt one another: . . . the spider was as harmless as the fly, and did not lie in wait for blood."7 Watson, the evangelical reformer of the eighteenth century, thought the serpent had been punished for his sins. "We have no reason at all to believe that the animal had a serpentine form in any mode or degree until its transformation: that he was then degraded to a reptile to go upon his belly imports, on the contrary, an entire loss and alteration of the original form."7 Augustine thought that many forms of life were superfluous, yet that in some way they completed the design of nature, while Luther held flies to be the images of devils and heretics sent by the devil to bother him while reading.

The appeal to authority produced other results in the field of natural history equally interesting. "Hence such contributions to knowledge as that the basilisk kills serpents by his breath and men by his glance, that the lion when pursued effaces his tracks with the end of his own tail, that the pelican nurses her young with her own blood, that serpents lay aside their venom before drinking, that the salamander quenches fire, that the hyena can talk with shepherds, that certain birds are born of the fruit of a certain tree when it happens to fall into the water, with other masses of science equally valuable." 8 Bartholomew, 7 WHITE, A. D. o. c., pp. 28, 29.

8 Ibid., p. 33.