Then, again, as to the origin
of man, he seems to have in like manner taught a theory of development from
lower forms of life. In his view the first living creatures must have come
into being in moisture (thus recalling the theory of
Thales). As time went on, and these forms of life reached their fuller
possibilities, they came to be transferred to the dry land, casting off
their old nature like a husk or bark. More particularly he insists that man
must have developed out of other and lower forms of life, because of his
exceptional need, under present conditions, of care and nursing in his
earlier years. Had he come into being at once as a human creature he could
never have survived.
The analogies of these
theories with modern speculations are obvious and interesting. But without
enlarging on these, one has only to say in conclusion that, suggestive and
interesting as many of these poor fragments, these disjecti membra poetae,
are individually, they leave us more and more impressed with a sense of
incompleteness in our knowledge of Anaximander’s theory as a whole. It may
be that as a consistent and perfected system the theory never was worked
out; it may be that it never was properly understood.
By some authorities it is stated that
Anaximander, the second philosopher of this school, was the first to use the
word arche in the philosophic sense. Whether this be so or not,
Thales certainly had the idea.
A History of Greek Philosophy /
THE SCHOOL OF MILETUS /
ANAXIMANDER
