Page:Greek Biology and Medicine.djvu/26

Rh the world, the impress of which has never been expunged from human thinking.

The old Ionian speculation upon Nature or was curious as to the material of the world, and considered how its visible component rocks and earth and waters came to be. This speculation, supplemented by investigation, was directed also to the origins of plants and animals, to the manner of their growth and to their living structure. Accordingly, the, which is to say the natural history or philosophy, of these physicists, included the beginnings of biology, which is the science of all living things, if we use this comparatively modern word in its most comprehensive sense.

There is no need to re-state the physical theories of the early Ionian philosophers and of their compeers who were Greeks even when not so evidently lonians. It is more to our purpose to remark that for us Greek biology begins in some extraordinary fragments ascribed to the great Milesian Anaximander, who was a younger friend of Thales and lived through the first half of the sixth century before Christ. They are as follows:

"Living creatures arose from the moist