It is fair to add, however, that the dreamings of Empedocles regarding the origin of living organisms led him to some conceptions that were much less luminous. On occasion, Empedocles the poet got the better of Empedocles the scientist, and we are presented with a conception of creation as grotesque as that which delighted the readers of Paradise Lost at a later day. Empedocles assures us that "many heads grow up without necks, and arms were wandering about, necks bereft of shoulders, and eyes roamed about alone with no foreheads."(16) This chaotic condition, so the poet dreamed, led to the union of many incongruous parts, producing "creatures with double faces, offspring of oxen with human faces, and children of men with oxen heads." But out of this chaos came, finally, we are led to infer, a harmonious aggregation of parts, producing ultimately the perfected organisms that we see. Unfortunately the preserved portions of the writings of Empedocles do not enlighten us as to the precise way in which final evolution was supposed to be effected; although the idea of endless experimentation until natural selection resulted in survival of the fittest seems not far afield from certain of the poetical assertions. Thus: "As divinity was mingled yet more with divinity, these things (the various members) kept coming together in whatever way each might chance." Again: "At one time all the limbs which form the body united into one by love grew vigorously in the prime of life; but yet at another time, separated by evil Strife, they wander each in different directions along the breakers of the sea of life. Just so is it with plants, and with fishes dwelling in watery halls, and beasts whose lair is in the mountains, and birds borne on wings."(17) All this is poetry rather than science, yet such imaginings could come only to one who was groping towards what we moderns should term an evolutionary conception of the origins of organic life; and however grotesque some of these expressions may appear, it must be admitted that the morphological ideas of Empedocles, as above quoted, give the Sicilian philosopher a secure place among the anticipators of the modern evolutionist. VII. GREEK SCIENCE IN THE EARLY ATTIC PERIOD