Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 20, 1909.djvu/490

 426 Four-footed Man :

stages are: (i) That in which single parts of animals arose separately, {e.g. heads without necks). (2) These parts continued at random, thus forming monstrosities, such as ^ovyevri avSpoTrpcopa, man-headed oxen. Only those survived which were composed of a fitting structure, and the rest perished. (3) "Whole forms" of human beings sprang from the earth, composed of earth and water, but with no distinction of sex. (4) Male and female were differentiated, and human beings now multi- plied by generation. The second stage, as far as concerns the survival of fit species,^ is of great interest, but does not bear on our present question. It is clear that the Empedoclean predecessor of man belongs to the third stage, of sexless, but otherwise complete, human forms. These, in their turn, were replaced by men and women.

We may next consider Archelaus, the teacher of Socrates, and the great exponent of a rationalistic interpretation of the universe and man. The chief reference to his views (Hippol., Ref. Haer., i. 9, R.P. 217) is thus translated by Prof Myres : —

" Concerning animals he said that when the earth became warm . . . there came to light the rest of the animals, of many dissimilar kinds, but all with the same mode of life, maintained by the slime ; and they were short-lived. But, afterwards, interbreeding occurred among these and men were separated off from the rest, and they constituted leaders and customs and arts and cities and so forth. And, he says, reason is implanted in all animals alike ; for each uses it according to his bodily frame, one more tardily, another more promptly. "

Prof. Myres calls this "the biological theory of evolution in a most explicit form," and the passage undoubtedly shows that Archelaus realised the close relationship of man with other animals. But, when we examine the passage more closely, the explicitness of the evolutionary

^ There is no idea of the Darwinian "struggle for existence," which does not concern different species, but refers to the struggle for food among the superabundant young of one species (see Ray Lancaster, Kingdom of Man, ch. i.).