Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 8.djvu/791

Rh EVOLUTION 755 whence &quot; of existence before the &quot; whither.&quot; At first, as in the case of the child, the problem of the genesis of things was conceived anthropomorphically : the ques tion &quot; How did the world arise ] &quot; first shaped itself to the human mind under the form &quot; Who made the world ? &quot; As long as the problem was conceived in this simple manner there was, of course, no room for the idea of a necessary self-conditioned evolution. Yet the first indistinct germ of such an idea appears to emerge in com bination with that of creation in some of the ancient systems of theogony. (See article COSMOGONY.) Thus, for example, in the myth of the ancient Parsees, the gods Ormuz and Ahriman are said to evolve themselves out of a primordial matter. It may be supposed that these crude fancies embody a dim recognition of the physical forces and objects personified under the forms of deities, and a rude attempt to account for their genesis as a natural pro cess. These first unscientific ideas of a genesis of the per manent objects of nature took as their pattern the process of organic reproduction and development, and this, not only because these objects were regarded as personalities, but also because this particular mode of becoming would most impress thess early observers. This same way of looking at the origin of the material world is illustrated in the Egyptian notion of a cosmic egg out of which issues the god (Phta) who creates the world. Indian Philosophy. Passing from mythology to specula tion properly so called, we find in the early systems of philosophy of India theories of emanation which approach in some respects the idea of evolution. Brahma is conceived as the eternal self-existent being, which on its material side unfolds itself to the world by gradually condensing itself to material objects through the gradations of ether, fire, water, earth, and the elements. At the same time this eternal being is conceived as the all-embracing world- soul from which emanates the hierarchy of individual souls. In the later system of emanation of Sankhja there is a more marked approach to a materialistic doctrine of evolution. If, we are told, we follow the chain of causes far enough back we reach unlimited eternal creative nature or matter. Out of this &quot; principal thing &quot; or &quot; original nature &quot; all material and spiritual existence issues, and into it will return. Yet this primordial creative nature is endowed with volition with regard to its own development. Its first emanation as plastic nature contains the original soul or deity out of which all individual souls issue. Early Greek Physicists. Passing by P&amp;gt;uddhism, which, though teaching the periodic destruction of our world by fire, &c., does not seek to determine the ultimate origin of the cosmos, we come to those early Greek physical philoso phers who distinctly set themselves to eliminate the idea of divine interference with the world by representing its origin and changes as a natural process. The early Ionian physi cists, including Thales, Anaximanier, and Anaximenes, seek to explain the world as generated out of a primordial matter which is at the same time the universal support of things. This substance is endowed with a generative or transmutative force 1 by virtue of which it passes into a succession of forms. They thus resemble modern evolu tionists, since they regard the world with its infinite variety cf forms as issuing from a simple mode of matter. More -specially the cosmology of Anaximander resembles the modern doctrine of evolution in its conception of the inde terminate (TO aTrfipov) out of which the particular forms of the cosmos are differentiated. Again, Anaximander may be aaid to prepare the way for more modern conceptions of material evolution by regarding his primordial substance as 1 Aecoriling to Ueberweg (who calls their sy stems Hylozoism), they all conceived of this matter as vital. eternal, and by looking on all generation as alternating with destruction, each step of the process being of course simply a transformation of the indestructible substance. Once more, the notion that this indeterminate body contains potentially in itself the fundamental contraries hot, cold, &c., by the excretion or evolution of which definite sub stances were generated, is clearly a forecasting of that antithesis of potentiality and actuality which from Aristotle downwards has been made the basis of so many theories of development. In conclusion, it is noteworthy that though resorting to utterly fanciful hypotheses respecting the order of the development of the world, Anaximander agrees with modern evolutionists in conceiving the heavenly bodies as arising out of an aggregation of diffused matter, and in assigning to organic life an origin in the inorganic materials of the primitive earth (pristine mud). The doctrine of Anaximenes, who unites the conceptions of a determinate and indeterminate original substance adopted by Thales and Anaximander in the hypothesis of a primordial and all- generating air, is a clear advance on these theories, inas much as it introduces the scientific idea of condensation and rarefaction as the great generating or transforming agencies. For the rest, his theory is chiefly important as emphasizing the vital character of the original substance. The primor dial air is coi .ceived as animated. Anaximeues seems to have inclined to a view of cosmic evolution as throughout involving a quasi-spiritual factor. This idea of the air as the original principle and source of life and intelligence is much more clearly expressed by a later writer, Diogenes of Apollonia. Diogenes made this conception of a vital and intelligent air the ground of a teleological view of climatic and atmospheric phenomena. It is noteworthy that be sought to establish the identity of organic and inorganic matter by help of the facts of vegetal and animal nutri tion. Diogenes distinctly taught that the world is of finite duration, and will be renewed out of the primitive substance. Pythagoreans. We may pass by that curious mode of conceiving the world as a development out of numbers regarded as active principles which was adopted by the Pythagoreans, since it is too remote from modern concep tions of cosmic evolution. 2 Eleatics. The Eleatics, Xenophaues, Parmenides, and Zeno need to be referred to here simply on the ground of their denial of all plurality and individuality in objects and of any real process of change, development, or transforma tion in the world. It may be added, however, that both Xenophanes and Parmenides have their way of regarding the origin of the cosmos and of animal and human life, though these conjectures are put forward as matters of &quot; opinion,&quot; having to do with the illusory impressions of the senses only. Heraclitus. The next Greek thinker, Heraclitus, de serves a prominent place in a history of the idea of evolu tion. This writer distinctly sides with the Ionian physi cists, as against the Eleatics, by asserting the reality of motion, change, and generation. He differs from the former, as Grote observes, by regarding the problem of change rather as one of ontology than of physics. Heraclitus conceives of the incessant process of flux in which all things are involved as consisting of two sides or moments generation and decay which are regarded as a confluence of opposite streams. In thus making transition or change, viewed as the identity of existence and non- existence the leading idea of his system, Heraclitus antici pated in some measure Hegel s peculiar doctrine of evolu- Oken s Elements of Physio-Philosophy. Sec his Plato, i. p. 10, note E.
 * Grote calls attention to an analogue of this notion of number in