tance that in its own general and omnipresent nature is without the
special marks that distinguish these tangible things from one another.
And in so far the philosophy of Anaximander is materialistic.

[Sidenote: Corporeal Processes. Hylozoism and Mechanism.]

Sect. 104. But the earliest thinkers are said to be _hylozoists_, rather
than strict materialists, because of their failure to make certain
distinctions in connection with the _processes_ of matter. The term
hylozoism unites with the conception of the formless material of the
world (+hyle:+), that of an animating power to which its formations and
transformations are due. Hylozoism itself was not a deliberate synthesis
of these two conceptions, but a primitive practical tendency to
universalize the conception, of life. Such "animism" instinctively
associates with an object's bulk and hardness a capacity for locomotion
and general initiative. And the material principles defined by the
philosophers retain this vague and comprehensive attribute as a matter
of course, until it is distinguished and separated through attempts to
understand it.

That aspect of natural process which was most impressive to Greek minds
of the reflective type was the alternation of "generation and decay." In
full accord with his more ancient master, Epicurus, the Latin poet
Lucretius writes:

"Thus neither can death-dealing motions keep the mastery
always, nor entomb existence forevermore; nor, on the other
hand, can the birth and increase giving motions of things
preserve them always after they are born. Thus the war of
first beginnings waged from eternity is carried on with
dubious issue: now here, now there, the life-bringing elements
of things get the mastery and are o'ermastered in turn: with
the funeral wail blends the cry which babies raise when they
enter the borders of light; and no night ever followed day,
nor morning night, that heard not, mingling with the sickly
infant's cries, wailings of the attendants on death and black
funeral."[226:2]

In a similar vein, the earliest conceptions of natural evolution
attributed it to the coworking of two principles, that of Love or union
and that of Hate or dissolution. The process is here distinguished from
the material of nature, but is still described in the language of
practical life. A distinction between two aspects of vital phenomena is
the next step. These may be regard