Note 55 — Chapter XVII · THE EPICUREAN VIEWS ON NATURE.

(4) Plants and animals. Out of the newly made earth plants at first grew,55 and afterwards animals came forth, since the latter, according to Lucretius, can by no possibility have fallen from heaven.56 In other worlds, likewise, living beings came into existence, though not necessarily in all.57 Among these beings were originally, as Empedocles had previously supposed,58 all sorts of composite or deformed creatures. Those, however, alone continued to exist which were fitted by nature to find support, to propagate, and to protect themselves from danger. Romantic creatures, such as centaurs of chimæras, can never have existed here, because the beings of which they are compounded would require conditions of life59 altogether different.