[16] Ritter and Preller, p. 63.
[17] Op. cit. p. 475.
[18] The tendency which it has been attempted to characterise as a fundamental moment of Greek thought can only be called analytical in default of a better word. It is a process by which two related terms are at once parted and joined together by the insertion of one or more intermediary links; as, for instance, when a capital is inserted between column and architrave, or when a proposition is demonstrated by the interposition of a middle term between its subject and predicate. The German words Vermitteln and Vermittelung express what is meant with sufficient exactitude. They play a great part in Hegel’s philosophy, and it will be remembered that Hegel was the most Hellenic of modern thinkers. So understood, there will cease to be any contradiction between the Eleates and Greek thought generally, at least from one point of view, as their object was to fill up the vacant spaces supposed to separate one mode of existence from another.
[19] Ritter and Preller, p. 62.
[20] For the originals of this and the succeeding quotations from Heracleitus, see Ritter and Preller, pp. 14-23.
[21] Τῇ μὲν ἡλικίᾳ πρότερος ὢν, τοῖς δ’ ἔργοις ὕστερος. Metaph. I. iii.
[22] Ritter and Preller, p. 90.
[23] Prantl, Aristoteles’ Physik, p. 484.
[24] Ritter and Preller, p. 11.
[25] Since the above remarks were first published, Mr. Wallace, in his work on Epicureanism, has stated that, according to Epicurus, ‘the very animals which are found upon the earth have been made what they are by slow processes of selection and adaptation through the experience of life;’ and he proceeds to call the theory in question, ‘ultra-Darwinian’ (Epicureanism, p. 114). Lucretius—the authority quoted—says nothing about ‘slow processes of adaptation,’ nor yet does he say that the animals were ‘made what they are’ by ‘selection,’ but by the procreative power of the earth herself. Picking out a ready-made pair of boots from among a number which do not fit is a very different process from manufacturing the same pair by measure, or wearing it into shape. To call the Empedoclean theory ultra-Darwinian, is like calling the Democritean or Epicurean theory of gravitation ultra-Newtonian. And Mr. Wallace seems to admit as much, when he proceeds to say on the very same page, ‘Of course in this there is no implication of the peculiarly Darwinian doctrine of descent or development of kind from kind with structure modified and complicated to meet changing circumstances.’ (By the way, this is not a peculiarly Darwinian doctrine, for it originated with Lamarck, spontaneous variation and selection being the additions made by the English naturalists). But what becomes then of the ‘slow processes of adaptation’ and the ‘ultra-Darwinian theory’ spoken of just before?