is not, to me at least, perfectly clear. He speaks nowhere of an age of Air, or Earth, or Water; and the peculiar agencies he imputes to fire (see infra) are apparently at all times at work, without ever ending in fire's dominating all, as in the common interpretation of the system of Heraclitus. Possibly he refers to the temporal sequence in the separation of the elements from the Sphere (for which see Zeller, p. 787), or simply to the fact that now this, now that created object in natura rerum has more of this or more of that element in its composition. Cf. fr. 26. In Chinese philosophy "The elements are supposed to conquer one another according to a definite law. We are told that wood conquers earth, earth conquers water, water conquers fire, fire conquers metal, and metal con- quers wood." Paul Carus, Chinese Thought, 1907, p. 47. But there is nothing in E.'s thought that seems to correspond.
Through one another: an allusion to the theory of the pores, the precursor of Atomism. Cf. Zeller, p. 767.
Fr. 18. The translator has made no effort to be consistent in render- ing (pCKlii and 0i\6Tris into English by different words. There is evidently no vital difference of meaning in the Greek as used by E. Cf. Plut, quoted by Diels, PPF.
THE FRAGMENTS OF EMPEDOCLES. 73 Fr. 19. With reference here to water.
Fr. 20. Line i has been supplied by the translator. Cf. with this fragment fr. 57-62.
Fr. 21. But come, etc.: 1. e., 'observe if what I have already said does not give a sufficiently clear description of the form, or physical characteristics of the elements' — "si quid materiae etiam in priore numeratione elementorum relictum erat formae explicandae." Diels, PPF.
The Sun: see note on fr. 41.
The eternal Stars: E. conceived the fixed stars as fastened to the vault (of the dark hemisphere), the planets as free, and both as formed of fire separated from the air.
The sun and the stars apparently correspond to the fiery element, rain to the watery, and earth to the earthy, con- sidered here as visible parts of the present universe no less than as the sources thereof. Air seems to be unrepresented, unless it be suggested by "glowing radiance." I am inclined to take the phrase merely as a bit of poetry — it is the radiance of the night, hardly the bright heaven, the aery expanse of day. But were it so interpreted, one might well note that E. regularly uses aUHip ('sky) and once oipar6s ('heaven') for air, and might compare Lucretius' "Unde aether sidera pascit" (Bk. I, 231), and Virgil's "Polus dura sidera pascit" (Bk. I, 608) — phrases which, however, are not, as I understand them, based on an astronomy like that of Empedocles.
The green: the Greek is S&^viira, 'the beginnings of things,' the 'semina rerum' of Lucretius (Liddell& Scott), here possibly with some suggestion of the growth of the vegetable world (hence the translation "green"). There is assuredly no ref- erence to the primeval "lumps with rude impress" of fr. 62, for E. is here speaking of things as they are.
The long-lived gods: the gods in the On Nature of Em- pedocles are part of the perishable world, formed, like tree or fish, out of the elements; hence, though "in honors excellent," they are not immortal.
74 THE FRAGMENTS OF EMPEDOCLES.
Fr. 22. Heaven: air; cf. note to fr. 21.
For amber Sun, etc.: the mutual attraction of the like and the repulsion of the unlike are here referred respectively to the action of Love and Hate; but elsewhere in his system Em- pedocles leaves us much in the dark on the matter. Cf. Gom- perz, p. 237. Tannery, p. 308. Also Burnet, p. 247.
Things that are most apt to mix: where the emanations of the one are peculiarly well fitted to the pores of the other. Cf. Burnet, 247 ff.
Fr. 23. mixing harmonious, etc.: Gomperz (p. 233) sees a reference in this fragment to the four primary colors, as analogous to the four elements. The simile were then doubly striking.
The goddess: lit., 'divinitjf" (Seov), undoubtedly the Muse, mentioned several times by E. (cf. fr. 4, 5, 131); important as a hint that the author is poet as well as philosopher, and may use language not always literally in accord with his sys- tem.
Fr. 25. One may regret that Empedocles has not left us more such pithy sayings.
Cf.
"A reasonable reason, If good, is none the worse for repetition."
Byron, Don Juan, XV, gi.
Fr. 26. In turn they conquer: "they" means the elements; cf. note on fr. 17.
olden Fate: fate is mentioned several times by E., and can only mean, I think, the universal law of being.
Whiles in fair order: Or. eh ha Kiaiiov; it refers to that orderly arrangement of the elements which results, as the uni- fying process goes on, in the dead harmony of the Sphere.
Whiles rent asunder: this refers to the process which ends in the complete dissipation of the elements and the destruction of all things.
Till they, when grown...succumb: i. e., as I understand it, till, after having completed the process of coming together again which ends in the Sphere, they again begin the process of separating which ends in dissipation. Cf. f r. 17; and Zeller (P- 77^) > who might question this interpretation.
THE FRAGMENTS OF EMPEDOCLES. 75 "Go under and succumb" is in tlie Greek irivepOe yivitrai, a phrase found in Theognis (1. 843): where the event is, however, hardly of the same cosmic im- portance.
y Fr. 27. There: in the Sphere, where one could distinguish none of the elements and none of the forms of things. One notes that the passage makes no mention of air, and wonders if a line may have been lost. The Sphere corresponds somewhat to the "Being" of Parmenides, which was spherical and im- movable; but the four elements, though in this sphere visibly indistinguishable, must still maintain their respective qual- ities. For various ancient interpretations of the nature of the Sphere, cf. Burnet, p. 250 ff.
In the close recess of Harmony: "in Concordiae latebris fixus tenetur." Diels, PPF. A poetic figure for the idea that the Sphere is completely under the reign of Love. Possibly "the close recess" is but the "surrounding solitude" below, and is not, perhaps, to be taken any more literally than the refer- ence to the Sphere as "exultant." If examined narrowly, however, difficulties must be admitted. The figure may be Pythagorean. Harmony, then, were the personified "fitting," "adaptation," and would refer to the closely fitted parts of the universe, when brought together by Love. JliKivot ('close- fitted,' 'compact') were itself perfectly appropriate; but Kp<i*os, as a noun (meaning, as it seems to here, 'a hidden place') would confuse the thought, for the figure, if Pythagorean, requires us to conceive "Harmon)'" as pervading the Sphere, not as hiding it somewhere in space. Moreover, one would expect to find Kpiipoi applied to the Sphere rather than to the recess. Prof. Newbold in a letter suggests Kpiv for Kpi^iw, i. e., 'in Harmonia's close-binding frost' as "better than the MS reading, though not altogether satisfactory."
Bodrero assumes (p. 135) that Harmony "is not Love alone, but the union of Love and Hate, their equilibrium"; but his whole interpretation of Empedocles is very far from that of all other scholars, and is usually, as here, of little service to the point of view adopted in these pages.
The rounded Sphere; This primeval Sphere must never be confounded with E.'s present spherical universe, composed, as 76 THE FRAGMENTS OF EMPEDOCLES.
we learn from the doxographers, of a revolving bright hemi- sphere of day and a dark hemisphere of night. Cf. note to fr.48.
Exultant in surrounding solitude: quoted with literary tact, though in a corrupt form, by Marcus Aurelius (XII, 3): "If thou wilt separate, I say, from this ruling faculty the things which are attached to it by the impressions of sense, and the things of time to come and of time that is past, and wilt make thyself like Empedocles' Sphere, 'AH round, and in its joyous rest reposing.'"
Fr. 29. Cf. fr. 134, where expressions, in part identical, are used apparently of the Divine; and note that below in fr. 31 the Sphere is called God.
Nor form of life-producing member: a touch possible only to a free and an austere imagination: Empedocles gazes upon man, the naked and the swift, and seizes at once on that which most identifies his manhood.
Fr. 30. Yet after mighty Strife: it will be remembered that Strife breaks up and separates the elements in the Sphere.
Amplest oath: Gr. itXot&s SpKov, Ht. 'broad oath.' Cf. fr. 115.
Fr. 31. God: the Sphere. "This mixture of all materials is divine only in the sense iii which antiquity in general sees in the world itself the totality of divine beings and powers." Zeller, p. 813; cf. p. 814.
Fr. 32. "quod e coniectura scripsi artus iungit Una eleganter ex- pressit Martianus Rota sive ingenio sive meliore libro fretus: articulis constat semper iunctura duobus." Diels, PPF.
Fr. 33. Diels (PPF) cites Homer, £,902, and says "e Plut. patet Concordiae processum illustrari" — it illustrates the process of Love.
Fr. 34. i. e., like a baker, according to Karsten and Burnet.
Fr. 35. When down the Vortex: the origin of the vortex is not ex- plained in any existing fragment of Empedocles. Tannery thinks (p. 312) "the vortex is due to a disturbance of equi- librium...the final resultant of the disordered movements which Hate occasions in the Sphere." And again (p. 314): "Hate is the principle of division and movement; in con- THE FRAGMENTS OF EMPEDOCLES. TJ sequence of its very mobility it wvks its way naturally into the interior of the motionless Sphere, produces an agitation and then a movement of revolution. Thereupon Hate is thrown off to the circumference where the movement is most rapid, and is finally excluded altogether." But cf. Zeller, p. 784, 787. This chaos, or vortex, caused, according to Tannery by Hate, has suggested to some the "x&aiui" of Hesiod and the "rudes indigestaque moles" of Ovid; it was, however, an accepted tenet of the older schools (cf. The Slvri in Anaximenes and Anaximander, W. A. Heidel, Class. Philology, I, 3., July 1906).
The eddying centre of the mass: "the mass" is not in the Greek; but is to be understood rather than "the Sphere" — which has properly ceased to be in becoming a vortex.
Oneness: not to be identified with the Sphere, but with the "fair order" of fr. 26, as seems clear from the lines that fol- low, "and from their mingling," etc.
Only as willingly: possibly a reference to the attraction of like for like. Cf. note to fr. 22.
Not all blameless: i. e.. Hate retreated under protest, differ- ing frqm "blameless Lovingness" in not willingly submitting to the "old decree" (see Diels, PPF, and fr. 30); although this seems, if anything more than a poetic touch, to involve the inconsistency of a free will over against the fundamental ne- cessity. Such cruxes recall the inconsistencies even in the more developed materialism of modern times, which assumes the possibility of sense experience and of distinguishing truth and error, right and wrong. Cf. fr. 116.
The circle's utmost hounds: the circumference of the vortex, not the Sphere.
The members: the elements.
Those mortal things: the elements as constituents of physical objects in the perishable world, contrasted with the elements as eternal sources of creation. Cf. fr. 17 and 26. "Dagli dementi etemi si formano esseri viventi e peribili." Bodrero, p. 130. The two states are again contrasted in "The erstwhile pure and sheer Were mixed," below.
Fr. 36. They: The elements. Cf. preceding fragment 78 THE FRAGMENTS OF EMPEDOCLES.
Fr. 37. ''cetera elementa duo commemorata fuisse veri simile (cf. Lucr. II 1114 sq.), at versus recuperari nequit." Diels, PPF. Cf. fr. 109 on sense perceptipn.
Fr. 38. If the brief examples of "all things we now behold" are to correspond to the four elements, one finds nothing representa- tive of fire, unless ether be here used, as by Anaxagoras, for fire, with reference to the fiery sky (cf. note to fr. 13s) and to the etymology of the word itself (from alOeiv, 'light up,' •blaze')— a sense, indeed, appropriate to the appellative "Titan." But this were quite a different sense than is usual in E., with whom ether regularly stands for the element air. This, how- ever, involves us in another difficulty: "moist air" (iypis i^p) has been already mentioned; but with Zeller we may interpret it as the lower, thicker, misty air (so i-fip in Homer), as op- posed to the upper air, the pure ether, "without, however, assuming any elemental difference," p. 786. "Moist air" is rendered "feuchten Luftkreis" by Diels (FV), and "damp mist" by Burnet. I may add that Burnet is evidently wrong in affirming that iiip never refers to air in E.: it is used inter- changeably with alBrip ('air") in fr. 100 (q. v.) Cf. Stickney, notes to Cicero's De Nat. Deorum, I, 44.
"With Ether, the Titan who binds the globe about:" cf.
"Bread, kingdoms, stars, and sky that holds them all."
Emerson, Days.
Fr. 39. The white Ether: "white" is not in the Greek, but is in keeping with E.'s "Ether, the all splendorous," the "awful heights of Air," the vaulted sky of his imagination.
As forsooth some tongues, etc.: a gruffness reminding of Heraclitus, and of Emerson's line: "The brave Empedocles defying fools."
Fr. 41. E. seems to have conceived the sun as "a luminous image of the earth, when the latter was lighted up by the fire of the day [i. e., the bright hemisphere] and reflected upon the crys- tal vault of heaven." Tannery, p. 317. But cf. Burnet, p. 254, and Zeller, p. 789, for slight differences of interpretation. How the sun, a mere reflection, was borne along its track in the re- volving sky we are left to guess.
THE FRAGMENTS OF EMPEDOCLES, 79 Fr. 42. An anticipation of the modern scientific explanation of solar eclipses.
The silver-eyed: yXavKiimSos /h^ki):; for the much discussed y\avKuTis see the Homeric dictionaries. It refers properly not to color but to "brightness and flashing splendor," used especially of Athene, of whom the Iliad (A, 200) says, "Seirii S4 ol Suae </>Aav$ev." Cf. Schol. on Apoll. Rhod. I. 1280 (quoted by Merrill and Riddell, Odys. A, 44): "SiayXaiaaovatv AvtI toC ijXiiTl^ovtn ^ StaXd/tTroviri, S$ev Kal 4 'AffrivS, yXavKairis, Kal yX'qvti ii Kdpri rou i<j>BaXfu>v, irapb, ri y\ai(taeiv 8 iari \i,ii,irta>. Kal 'EApiitl- Sijs htl rijs acX^vTis ^XP'}"''"''' yXavKairls re arpi^erai niivifi." But it is doubtful if E., who speaks of "Selene mild," intended here anything stronger than "with eye of silvery sheen."
7XouKos is used of the willow, the olive, and E. himself uses it (fr. 93) of the elder. Diels' "blauaugigen" seems to me in- adequate.
Fr. 43. E. knew the source of the moon's light (cf. fr. 45, 47); but the moon itself he held to be a disk of frozen air, and one-half as far from the earth as the sun ("E. 8tir\<i(7«oi' ivix^iv {rhv ViKiav) atrh t^s 7^1 l^vep riiv ceX^yiji'." Plac. II, 31).
Fr. 44 He darts his beams: with Diels I take the subject to be 'the sun' and not 'the earth' (Burnet); and "Olympos" is then the bright heaven, Tannery's "feu du jour'' (see note to fr. 41). E. explained the light of the heavenly bodies through his doc- trine of emanations, and, accordingly maintained — a correct conclusion from incorrect premises — that the sun's light re- quires a certain time to reach earth. Cf. Zeller, p. 790.
Fr. 46. Which round the outmost: probably 'goal is turning,' or something of the sort, followed here. The form of the clause shows that it served as a simile.
Fr. 47. Her lord: the sun, see note on fr. 43.
Fr. 48. E. conceived our earth as surrounded by a hollow globe composed of two hemispheres, a lighter of fire, a darker of air, whose revolution produces day and night. Cf. Zeller, p. 786 flf. This line means only that earth shuts off the light of the fiery hemisphere that sinks below the horizon, bearing with it its sun (see fr. 41).
80 THE FRAGMENTS OF EMPEDOCLES.
Fr, so. For authenticity cf. Diels, PPF. I am uncertain what scien- tific meaning this line had for Empedocles; but for the modern reader it is at least charming poetry. Burnet (p. 256) says: "Wind was explained from the opposite motions of the fiery and airy hemispheres. Rain was caused by the compression of the Air, which forced any water there might be in it out of its pores in the form of drops."
Fr. 51. And upward, etc.: of fire, which, in E.'s thought, had an upward, as air a downward (see fr. S4) tendency, innate powers apparently not elsewhere explained. The peculiar functions attributed by E. to fire led Aristotle (De gen. et corr., B 3. 330b 19) to separate it from the other elements of the system, an interpretation developed with much ingenuity by Bodrero (Chap. II.).
Fr. 52. Doubtless an allusion to volcanic phenomena, as common in Sicily.
Fr. S3. "It" refers to air. "Met," i. e., with the other elements.
Fr. 54. See note to fr. 51.
Fr. 55. "The earth was at first mixed with water, but the in- creasing compression caused by the velocity of the world's revolution [the Vortex of fr. 35] made the water gush forth." Burnet, p. 256. The phrase is not, then, as criticized by Aris- totle, mere poetic metaphor.
Fr. 56. With E. fire has a crystallizing, condensing function. Cf. fr. 73.
Fr. S7-6i. These fragments contain the rude germ of the theory of natural selection and the origin of species (but cf. Zeller, p. 79S); they seem to refer to a process of animal genesis during the period when Love is increasing in power (i.e., the fourth period; see fr. 17); fr. 62, on the other hand to another process when Hate is increasing (i. e., in the period of the present world). Cf. Burnet, p. 261.
Cod with god: Gr. Sal/tovi Salnuy, {. e.. Love and Hate.
There seems to be no reason for the conjecture, sometimes advanced, that E. is here influenced by the monsters of Baby- lonian legend and art. The Greek imagination was long fa- THE FRAGMENTS OF EMPEDOCLES. 8 1 miliar with centaurs, satyrs, chimxras, Cyclops, hermaphro- dites and other "mixed shapes of being." The library of Johns Hopkins has recently (1906) been enriched, so a med- ical colleague informs me, by a collection (originally from Marburg), containing some 936 old volumes on monsters, which the curious reader may consult at his leisure for further parallels.
Fr. 62. See notes to fr. S7-6j.
The sundered Are: Gr. Kpiv6iuvav rSp, lit. 'self-sundering* — the fire which "burns beneath the ground" and has the "upward zeal." Though E. is speaking here of mankind, "Of men and women, the pitied and bewailed," he probably considers the process as typical for the whole animal kingdom.
Warm: warm and cold seem to have been important con- ditions in E.'s system, the former favoring growth, the latter inducing decay, old age, sleep, death, in the last instance per- haps serving as the occasion for the separation of the elements by Hate. The genera.1 idea is probably as old as speculation.
Fr. 63. For 'tis in part in man's: i. e., in part in the male semen. E. explained conception as a union of male and female semen, each furnishing parts for the formation of offspring. Cf.
"Aegre admiscetur muliebri semine semen.''
Lucr., IV, 1239.
In so far as this ancient belief recognizes that both sexes furnish the germs of the offspring, it is an anticipation of modern embryology.
Fr. 64. An alternative reading, a little freer: "Love-longing comes upon him, waking well Old memories, as he gazes."
Fr. 65. This is, perhaps, as rational as most modern theories. "At present we are almost absolutely ignorant concerning the causation of sex, though certain observers are inclined to suppose that the determining factor must be sought for in the ovum." Williams, Obstetrics (1904)1 P- 143- 82 THE FRAGMENTS OF EMPEDOCLES.
Fr. 66. Cloven meads: surely the labia majora.
Fr. 68. White pus: Gr. t6 iriov, not A tC^s ('colostrum'), if my available lexical information be correct, though the latter is probably meant (Burnet). The comparison seems to be- however grotesque— between mother's milk (properly colos- trum) in the breast enlarging during pregnancy, and the matter of a suppurating boil— the teat of the former corre- sponding to the "head" of the latter. Colostrum is, however, present in the breast after the first few months.
Fr. 69. Twice-hearing: i.e., bearing offspring in the seventh and tenth month.
Fr. 70. Sheepskin: used of the membrane conceived as covering the "embryo" (foetus?). E. could only have been familiar with the membranes which follow the birth of the young.
Fr. 71. Sun: this is of course here a symbol for the element fire.
Fr. 73. Kypris: Aphrodite, Love.
To speed of fire that she might grow firm: fire has a con- densing property. Cf. fr. 56.
Fr. 74. The subject may be Aphrodite.
Fi"- 75-76. Here the bones, the earthen part (in modern science, the lime) within some animals are related, quite in the spirit of our own physiology, to the shells on the outside of others. The turtle's shell, consisting chiefly of keratin, is, however, morphologically connected, like horn, finger-nails, etc., with the skin. Aristotle {Pneumat. 484a 38) says that E. explained fingernails as produced from sinew by hardening.
Fr. 77-78. Trees were supposed by E. to derive their nourishment through their pores from the air, more or less vitalizing ac- cording to the mixture — again a suggestion of modern science.
Fr. 79. In thus assimilating the seeds of the olive tree to the eggs laid by birds, E. was probably guided by similarity no less of function than of form.
Fr. 80. Wherefore: Can any one tell me? Prof. McGilvary happily suggests it\is "because the pomegranate has a very hard THE FRAGMENTS OF EMPEDOCLES. 83 thick skin, not admitting air as rwidily as the thin skin of an apple. See fr. 77-78."
Fr. 82. A doctrine of comparative morphology that has reminded many critics of the poet-scientist Goethe.
Fr. 84. Of horny lantern: the ancients had lanterns made of trans- lucent horn, and "horny," though not in the text, must be understood here.
"Emp. conceives the eye as a sort of lantern. The apple of the eye contains fire and water enclosed in films, the pores of which, alternately arranged for each element, give to the emanations of each a free passage. Fire serves for perceiving the bright, water for the dark. When the emanations of visible things reach the outside of the eye, there pass through the pores from within it emanations of its fire and water, and from the joint meeting arises vision." Zeller, p. 801.
"It was an attempt, however inadequate, to explain percep- tion by intermediate processes. It was an attempt, moreover, which admitted, however reluctantly, the subjective factor, thus completing one stage of the journey whose ultimate goal is to recognize that our sense-perceptions are anything rather than the mere reflections of exterior objective qualities of things." Gomperz, p. 235. Cf. Burnet, p. 267.
Fr. 86. From which: i. e., from these elements.
Fr. 87. Bolts of love: a metaphor for the uniting power of Aphro- dite. Cf. fr. 96.
Fr. 88. Interesting as an early lesson in a sound theory of optics.
Fr. 89. Cf. note on fr. 2.
Fr. go. Sour sprung for Sour: "'went for" (^jSij) would be a more effective rendering, but for the slangy connotations.
Fr. 92. Diels (FV), following Aristotle, who has preserved us the fragment, makes the connection sufficiently clear: "Die Samen- mischung bet der Erzeugung von Mauleseln bringt, da zwei weiche Stoffe susammenkommen, eine harte Verhindung zu- stande. Denn nur Hohles and Dickies passt zu einander. Dort aber geht es, wie wenn man Zinn und Kupfer mischt."
84 THE FRAGMENTS OF EMPEDOCLES.
Fr. 93. Silvery: See note to f r. 43.
Fr. 94. Preserved only in Latin (Plut. Quaest. not., 39). Diels (PPF) has thus turned it into Greek: "/col irAei ev pivBei iroTo/wC ii£Kav in aKibevras Kal airriXai^SecriTiv i/uis evoparai i» ivrpoii."
Fr. 9S. They: I e., the eyes. The thought is thus completed by Diels (FV), following Simplicius: "ergab sich auch der Unterschied, dass einige bei Tag, andere bei Nacht heller sehen."
Fr. 96. Thus bones are formed of 2 parts earth, 2 parts water, and 4 parts fire.
Broad-breasted melting pots: "ben construtti vasi," as Bod- rero translates it.
Clue of Harmony: cf. "bolts of love."
Fr. 97. Thus completed by Diels (FV), following Aristotle: "hat ihre Form daher, dass sie bei der Entstehung der Tiere durch eine sufdllige Wendung serbrach."
Fr. 98. She met: Gr. ovviKvpae, a word, among others, which sug- gests in Empedocles' system, an implicit doctrine of chance. Cf. fr. 102, 103. Cf. Bodrero, p. 107 ff.
Ether, the all-splendorous: an illustration of how E. will sometimes emphasize a term, used sjrmbolically to denote an element as one of the four-fold roots of all things, by an epithet suggestive of that element as it appears in the world about us.
Diels (PPF) paraphrases: "Tellus ad sanguinem efficiendum fere pares partes ignis, aquae, aeris arcessit, sed fieri potest ut paulo plus terrae aut minus, ut quae pluribus elementis una occurrat, admisceatur."
Fr. 99. A Aeshy sprout: E.'s picturesque definition of the outer ear. The inner ear he likens to a bell which sounds as the air strikes upon it — again an anticipation of modern science.
Fr. 100. This fragment (cf. fr. 105) shows some knowledge of the motions of the blood, though far enough from the discovery of Harvey. Cf. Harvey's own work On the Motion of the Heart and Blood in Animals (1628) for the anterior views. As a theory of respiration, it is as grotesque as it is ingenious.
THE FRAGMENTS OF EMPEDOCLES.
85 The comparison with the clepsydra, though in form of a Homeric simile, rests, as Burnet points out, upoij scientific experiment, and is doubly significant for its sound physics. The following diagram and analysis from Burnet (p. 230) will, perhaps, make the allusion clear: "The water escaped drop by drop through a single orifice at a. The top b was not altogether open, but was per- forated so that the air might exert its pressure on the water inside. The in- strument was filled by plunging it in water upside down, and stopping the orifice at a with the finger before taking it out again."
The water's destined bulk: i. e., a cor- responding mass of water.
Fr. loi. All that is left of E.'s theory of scent. The mites are the emanations.
Fr. 102. Got: lit, "chanced on" (\e\6yxa(ri). Cf. note on fr. 98.
Fr. 103. Chance: cf. note on fr. 98. Here, as in some passages elsewhere, E.i seems to be a hylozoist. Cf. Zeller, p. 802; but E. nowhere credits the elements as such, with consciousness, unless fr. 109 be so interpreted (but cf. Gomperz, p. 245).
Fr. 104. The lightest: supply "bodies."
Fr. 105. In the blood streams: cf. note to f r. 100.
The blood that stirs, etc.: the verse was often alluded to by the ancients (cf. Diels, PPF), and Tertullian seems himself to have turned it into Latin in his De Anima (chap. 16): "namque homini sanguis circumcordialis et sensus."
But E. did not mean here, I think, to exclude some power of thought from other parts of the body; he says "where prevails the power," i. e., where it chiefly {iiAXurra) exists. Cf. Zeller, p. 803.
86 THE FRAGMENTS OF EMPEDOCLES.
Fr. io6. Cf.
"Praeterea gigni pariter cum corpore et una crescere sentimus pariterque senescere mentem.''
Lucr., Ill, 445-6.
"Empedocles hat nicht die Seele aus den Elementen zusam- mengesetzt, sondern er hat das, was wir Seelenthatigkeit nen- nen, aus der elementarischen Zusammensetzung des Korpers erklart, eine vom Korper verschiedene Seele kennt seine Phy- sik nicht" — i. e., a soul as distinct from the composition of the elements in the body is nowhere found in the On Nature. Zeller, p. 802.
Fr. 107. These: the elements. Cf. note on fr. 106.
Fr. 108. "By day" and "by night" have been supplied here from references in Simpl. and Philop., quoted by Diels, PPF.
Fr. 109. Through Earth, etc.: "we think each element with the cor- responding element in our body" (Zeller, p. 802), and the same holds true of Love and Hate (cf. note on fr. 17).
Cf. Plotinus: Oi yhp &v wiiirore elSev j0da\/iis ^Xioi' ^XioeiS^! iiii yeyevTiniros. Cf. also Goethe: "War' nicht das Auge sonnenhaft, Die Sonne konnt' es nie erblicken; Lag* nicht in uns des Gottes eig'ne Kraft, Wie konnt' uns Gottliches entzticken?"
Man is the microcosm.
Fr. no. All these things: perhaps the good thoughts of the master's doctrine; E. is here, as elsewhere, addressing Pausanias.
For of themselves...they grow, etc.: sound psychology, if my interpretation just above be correct, and capable of serving as the basis for a chapter in the philosophy of living, on the practical bearings upon character of right and wrong thinking.
All things have Axed intent: i. e., consciousness.
Fr. III. Drugs: Gr. (p&p/iaKa; possibly "charms" is better, as sug- gested to me by a friend. Galen makes E. the founder of the Italian school of medicine. Cf. Burnet, p. 215.
The dominion over human ills, sickness, windstorms, drought and death, here promised to Pausanias, was early imputed to THE FRAGMENTS OF EMPEDOCLES. 87 Empedocles himself (cf. Introduction), perhaps, chiefly by vir- tue of these lines. * The might of perished men: Gr. KaTa<t>9iixivov fUvos AvSp6s. "Spirits of the dead" seems hardly permissible with /t^ros (though the word is sometimes used of the spirit, the courage of man), and would render still more crass the contradiction with what E. has elsewhere told us in the On Nature of the psychic life. One would conjecture that the fragment belongs to the Purifications, but for the fact that it is addressed to Fausanias, and not, as the latter, to the citizens of Acragas, THE PURIFICATIONS.