Empedocles

“ The words in which Empedocles expresses his conception of deity have been preserved and are well worth quoting: "It is not impossible," he says, "to draw near (to god) even with the eyes or to take hold of him with our hands, which in truth is the best highway of persuasion in the mind of man; for he has no human head fitted to a body, nor do two shoots branch out from the trunk, nor has he feet, nor swift legs, nor hairy parts, but he is sacred and ineffable mind alone, darting through the whole world with swift thoughts." ”

“ Empedocles regarded himself as specially protected by the god of song and medicine and prophetic insight. His genius would therefore naturally take its highest flight in singing praises to this mighty patron. The hymn to Zeus, which has been ascribed to Cleanthes, and some of the pseudo-Orphic declamations, may give us an idea of the gravity and enthusiasm which Empedocles would have displayed in treating so stirring a theme. Of his remaining works we possess fragments. The great poem on Nature, the Lustral Precepts, and the Discourse on Medicine were all celebrated among the ancients. ”

“ But the detailed development which Empedocles gave to this principle was by no means satisfactory. In the first place, if we hold that all objects are composed of parts, and that all becoming is due to the mixing and unmixing of pre-existent matter, we must have a theory of particles. And we do hear vaguely of physical particles in the doctrine of Empedocles, but no definition is given of their nature, and no clear conception is formed of their character. Secondly, the moving forces of Empedocles, Love and Hate, are fanciful and mythological. ”

“ And talk to him of things at hand and common,
Not miracles! thou art a learned man,
But credulous of fables as a girl.
Pausanias
And thou, a boy whose tongue outruns his knowledge,
And on whose lightness blame is thrown away.
Enough of this! I see the litter wind
Up by the torrent-side, under the pines.
I must rejoin Empedocles. Do thou
Crouch in the brushwood till the mules have pass'd;
Then play thy kind part well. Farewell till night!
SCENE II
Noon. A Glen on the highest skirts of the woody region of Etna.
Empedocles—Pausanias
Pausanias
The noon is hot. ”

“ Nothing is more remarkable about Empedocles than his versatility and comprehensiveness. Other men of his age were as nobly born, as great in philosophic power, as disti [Pg 208] nguished for the part they bore in politics, as celebrated for poetic genius, as versed in mystic lore, in medicine, and in magic arts. But Parmenides, Pythagoras, Pausanias, and Epimenides could claim honor in but one, or two at most, of these departments. Empedocles united all, and that too, if we may judge by the temper of his genius and the few legends handed down to us about his life, in no ordinary degree. ”

“ The burden and the mystery of life seem to weigh heavily on both, and to mould their very language to a deep, monotonous solemnity of tone. But along with this affinity of temperament there is also a marked difference in their modes of thought and feeling. The view of Nature in the philosophy of Empedocles appears to be just emerging out of the anthropomorphic fancies of an earlier time: the first rays of knowledge are seen trying to pierce through the clouds of the dawn of enquiry: the dreams and sorrows of religious mysticism accompany the awakened energies of the reason. ”

“ But none have equalled Empedocles, in whose capacious idiosyncrasy the most opposite qualities found ample room for coexistence, who sincerely claimed the supernatural faculties which Paracelsus must have only half believed, and who lived at a time when poetry and fact were indistinguishably mingled, and when the world was still absorbed in dreams of a past golden age, and in rich foreshadowings of a boundless future. ”

“ The slaying of any living creature, therefore, Empedocles, like Pythagoras, abhorred, for all were kin. All foul acts were forms of worse than suicide; life should be a long act of worship, of expiation, of purification. And in the dim past he pictured a vision of a golden age, in which men worshipped not many gods, but Love only, and not with sacrifices of blood, but with pious images, and cunningly odorous incense, and offerings of fragrant myrrh. ”

“ What other end had Heracles? 'Twas the thunderbolt, methinks, that slew Asclepius, Dionysus [5] ? 'Twas in the crater that Empedocles sought death?'
Theagenes (our friend with the lungs) had got thus far, when I asked one of the bystanders what all this meant about 'fire,' and what Heracles and Empedocles had got to do with Proteus?—'Proteus,' he replied, 'will shortly cremate himself, at the Olympic games.'—'But how,' I asked, 'and why?' He did his best to explain, but the Cynic went on bawling, and it was quite out of the question to attend to anything else. ”

“ Whatever ground of fact they may possess, they are wholly consistent with the picture we have formed to ourselves of the philosopher, and prove at least the superstition which had gathered round his name. One of these legends has served all ages as a moral for the futility of human designs, and for the just reward of inordinate vanity. Every one who knows the name of Empedocles has heard that, having jumped into Etna in order to conceal the time and manner of his death, and thus to establish his divinity, fate frustrated his schemes by casting up his brazen slippers on the crater's edge. ”

“ Since the nature of the elements is a combination of contraries, of dryness and moisture, hot and cold, and since by their relation and combination all things are constructed and undergo partial changes,—the whole not admitting of dissolution,—Empedocles says all things exist in this manner: "Sometimes in love all things meeting together in one. Sometimes, again, each being carried away by animosity of hate." ”

“ Considering that there is a third principle, just and set between good and evil, Prepon also does not thus succeed in escaping the teaching of Empedocles. For Empedocles says that the cosmos is governed by wicked Strife, and the other conceivable [world] by Love, while between the two opposed [158] principles is a just Logos, by whom the things severed by Strife are brought together and are attached by Love to the One. ”

“ For in his opinion what is material is composite and possessed of potentiality. Hence only those things have matter which are subject to generation and decay, and in general change from one state to another.
Without going into detail as to the nature of this work of Empedocles named by Falaquera as the source of Gabirol's views—expositions of these so-called Empedoclean views and fragments from Empedocles's book have been found in Arabian and Hebrew writers [88] —it is sufficient for us to know that it has nothing to do with the real Empedocles, the ancient Greek philosopher ”

“ Another tradition of far more credible aspect asserts that Empedocles retreated from Italy, returning to the home of his fathers in Peloponnesus to die there obscurely. It seems odd that the facts regarding the death of so great a man, at so comparatively late a period, should be obscure; but this, perhaps, is in keeping with the personality of the man himself. ”

“ Therefore, according to Empedocles, Love gathers the hated and tortured and punished souls together into this world. For [Love] is good and has pity on their wailing and the disorder and wickedness created by furious Strife. And she hastens and toils to lead them forth quickly out of the world and to settle them in the One, so that all things brought together by her may come to oneness. It p. 378. is then by reason of this arrangement of this much-divided [140] world by deadly Strife, that Empedocles exhorts his disciples to abstain from all things which have life. ”

“ For Empedocles asserts that the world is managed by wicked Discord, and that the other (world) which (is managed) by Friendship, is cognisable by intellect. And (he asserts) that these are the two different principles of good and evil, and that intermediate between these diverse principles is impartial reason, in accordance with which are united the things that have been separated by Discord, (and which,) in accordance with the influence of Friendship, are accommodated to unity. The impartial reason itself, that which is an auxiliary to Friendship, Empedocles denominates “Musa.” ”

“ The ancient Egyptians, far from restricting their adoration to cats and dogs and such small deer, very liberally extended it to men. One of these human deities resided at the village of Anabis, and burnt sacrifices were offered to him on the altars; after which, says Porphyry, he would eat his dinner just as if he were an ordinary mortal. In classical antiquity the Sicilian philosopher Empedocles gave himself out to be not merely a wizard but a god. ”

“ For Empedocles affirms Discord to be a furious, and perturbed, and unstable Demiurge, (thus) denominating Discord the creator of the world. For this constitutes the condemnation and necessity of souls which Discord forcibly severs from unity, and (which it) fashions and operates upon, (according to Empedocles,) who expresses himself after some such mode as, the following:—
“Who perjury piles on sin,
While demons gain a life prolonged;” ”

“ Again, the doctrine of Empedocles, [422] that nothing can arise which has not existed before, and that nothing existing can be annihilated, has its exact parallel in the characteristic doctrine of the Sānkhya system about the eternity and indestructibility of matter. According to Greek tradition, Thales, Empedocles, Anaxagoras, Democritus, and others undertook journeys to Oriental countries in order to study philosophy. Hence there is at least the historical possibility of the Greeks having been influenced by Indian thought through Persia. ”

“ Empedocles endeavoured to make the people believe that there was a kind of divinity in him, and affecting to be esteemed more than a man, cast himself into the burnings of Mongebel, that they might suppose him to have been taken up to the gods.256 Pythagoras his fiction of a journey to hell was upon the same account. ”

“ In Hellas this doctrine had been well known before Plato, Socrates, or the Hippocratic writers, one of whom we have found referring to it. The Sicilian Greek Empedocles, a philosopher and physician born at Acragas about 495 B.C., is said to have held, long before Aristotle, that the heart is the part formed first in the embryo; [301] and in a line of verse which has come down to us Empedocles said: "In the blood about man's heart is his understanding." ”

“ Empedocles apparently regarded love (φιλότης) and discord (νεῖκος) as alternately holding the empire over things,—neither, however, being ever quite absent. As the best and original state, he seems to have conceived a period when love was predominant, and all the elements formed one great sphere or globe. Since that period discord had gained more sway; and the actual world was full of contrasts and oppositions, due to the combined action of both principles. His theory attempted to explain the separation of elements, the formation of earth and sea, of sun and moon, of atmosphere. ”

“ That is, he calls the One divine, and says that the unity formerly existing in the One was rent asunder by Strife and came into being in these many things, existing according to Strife’s ordering. For, says he, Strife is the furious and troublous and unresting Demiurge of this cosmos, whose p. 375. [fashioner] Empedocles calls it. For this is the judgment and compulsion of the souls which Strife rends away from the One and fashions and works up, which process [Empedocles] describes somehow like this:—
Who having sinned swore falsely
And demons are allotted long-drawn out life. ”

“ But who was the teacher of the Pythagorean school that Empedocles was a pupil of, they do not say; for, as for the letter of Telauges, in which he is stated to have been a pupil of Hippasus and Brontinus, that is not worthy of belief. But Theophrastus says that he was an imitator and a rival of Parmenides, in his poems, for that he too had delivered his opinions on natural philosophy in epic verse. ”

“ The gnomic poets of Greece, though often cited for their maxims, were the least poetic of the Greek singers, and the least endowed with imagination. Aristotle calls Empedocles more 'the natural philosopher than the poet.' Solon indeed, with all his wisdom, can be as tedious as Wordsworth, and Theognis is usually prosaic. ”

“ One truth is clear,—Whatever is, is right.” 446.Apollonius Rhodius, Lib. I. Virgil, Æneid, Lib. I.447.ap. Eichstadt. Lucret. p. lxxxvii. ci. cii. ed. Lips. 1801.448.The fragments of Empedocles have been chiefly preserved by Simplicius, in a Greek commentary on Aristotle, written about the middle of the sixth century. This commentary, with the verses of Empedocles which it comprehended, was translated into Latin in the thirteenth century ”

“ Stumbles on innocence sometimes.
↑ Empedocles, a Pythagorean philosopher and poet, held that, concord and discord were the two principles (one formative, the other destructive) which regulated the four elements that compose the universe. The great anachronism in these two celebrated lines increases the humour. Empedocles lived about 2100 years before Alexander Ross. ↑ Alexander Ross was a very voluminous writer, and chaplain to Charles the First. He wrote a "View of all Religions," which had a large sale; an answer to Sir Thomas Browne's Pseudoxia and Religio Medici ”

“ It is said that in the eighty-fourth Olympiad, Empedocles restored to life a woman who was about to be buried, and that this circumstance induced the Greeks, for the future protection of the supposed dead, to establish laws which enacted that no person should be interred until the sixth or seventh day. ”