looked upon Nature as a gradual development and as still in process of
change. In the suggestions of Empedocles, to take the best instance, there
were "four sparks of truth,--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, that the natural cause of the production of perfect forms
was the extinction of the imperfect." (Op. cit. page 41.) But the
fundamental idea of one stage giving origin to another was absent. As the
blue Aegean teemed with treasures of beauty and threw many upon its shores,
so did Nature produce like a fertile artist what had to be rejected as well
as what was able to survive, but the idea of one species emerging out of
another was not yet conceived.

Aristotle's views of Nature (See G.J. Romanes, "Aristotle as a Naturalist",
"Contemporary Review", Vol. LIX. page 275, 1891; G. Pouchet "La Biologie
Aristotelique", Paris, 1885; E. Zeller, "A History of Greek Philosophy",
London, 1881, and "Ueber die griechischen Vorganger Darwin's", "Abhandl.
Berlin Akad." 1878, pages 111-124.) seem to have been more definitely
evolutionist than those of his predecessors, in this sense, at least, that
he recognised not only an ascending scale, but a genetic series from polyp
to man and an age-long movement towards perfection. "It is due to the
resistance of matter to form that Nature can only rise by degrees from
lower to higher types." "Nature produces those things which, being
continually moved by a certain principle contained in themselves, arrive at
a certain end."

To discern the outcrop of evolution-doctrine in the long interval between
Aristotle and Bacon seems to be very difficult, and some of the instances
that have been cited strike one as forced. Epicurus and Lucretius, often
called poets of evolution, both pictured animals as arising directly out of