Guthrie, W. K. C. In the Beginning: Some Greek Views on the Origins of Life and the Early State of Man (1957)

Guthrie, W. K. C. In the Beginning: Some Greek Views on the Origins of Life and the Early State of Man / W. K. C. Guthrie. — Ithaca : Cornell University Press, 1957. — 151 p.

This book is a collection of the Messenger Lectures on the Evolution of Civilization, which I had the honour of delivering at Cornell University in the spring of 1957. My subject is the history of Greek ideas on the origin of life and the early state of man. It is a field which touches on many others—philosophy, religion, science, and literature—and I have tried to show how the Greeks, from the poets and myth-makers to the philosophers, grappled with the mystery of how life began and how man came to be what he is. I have traced the development from the primitive myths of 'Mother Earth' to the more sophisticated rationalism of the philosophers, attempting to see the problem through their eyes rather than reading into their thoughts the theories of later centuries.