EMPEDOCLES
Empedocles was a man of Agrigentum in Sicily. The dates of his birth
and death are placed about 495 and 435 B.C. respectively. Like
Pythagoras, he possessed a powerful and magnetic personality. Hence
all kinds of legends quickly grew up and wove themselves round his
life and death. He was credited with the performance of miracles, and
romantic stories were circulated about his death. A man of much
persuasive eloquence he raised himself to the leadership of the
Agrigentine democracy, until he was driven out into exile.
The philosophy of Empedocles is eclectic in character. Greek
philosophy had now developed a variety of conflicting principles, and
the task of Empedocles is to reconcile these, and to weld them
together in a new system, containing however no new thought of its
own. In speaking of Parmenides, I pointed out that his teaching may be
interpreted either in an idealistic or a materialistic sense, and that
these two aspects of thought lie side by side in Parmenides, and that
it is possible to emphasize either the one or the other. Empedocles
seizes upon the materialistic side. The essential thought of
Parmenides was that Being cannot pass into not-being, nor not-being
into Being. Whatever is, remains for ever what it is. {82} If we take
that in a purely material context, what it means is that matter has
neither beginning nor end, is uncreated and indestructible. And this
is the first basic principle of Empedocles. On the other hand,
Heracleitus had shown that becoming and change cannot be denied. This
is the second basic principle of Empedocles. That there is no absolute
becoming, no creation, and utter destruction of things, and yet that
things do somehow arise and pass away, this must be explained, these
contradictory ideas must be reconciled. Now if we assert that matter
is uncreated and indestructible, and yet that things arise and pass
away, there is only one way of explaining this. We must suppose that
objects, as wholes begin and cease to be, but that the material
particles of which they are composed are uncreated and indestructible.
This thought now forms the first principle of Empedocles, and of his
successors, Anaxagoras, and the Atomists.
Now the Ionic philosophers had taught that all things are composed of
some one ultimate matter. Thales believed it to be water, Anaximenes
air. This necessarily involved that the ultimate kind of matter must
be capable of transformation into other kinds of matter. If it is
water, then water must be capable of turning into brass, wood, iron,
air, or whatever other kind of matter exists. And the same thing
applies to the air of Anaximenes. Parmenides, however, had taught that
whatever is, remains always the same, no change or transformation
being possible. Empedocles here too follows Parmenides, and interprets
his doctrine in his own way. One kind of matter, he thinks, can never
change into another kind of matter; fire never becomes {83} water, nor
does earth ever become air. This leads Empedocles at once to a
doctrine of elements. The word "elements," indeed, is of later
invention, and Empedocles speaks of the elements as "the roots of
all." There are four elements, earth, air, fire, and water. Empedocles
was therefore the originator of the familiar classification of the
four elements. All other kinds of matter are to be explained as
mixtures, in various proportions, of these four. Thus all origination
and decease, as well as the differential qualities of certain kinds of
matter, are now explained by the mixing and unmixing of the four
elements. All becoming is simply composition and decomposition.
But the coming together and separation of the elements involves the
movement of particles, and to explain this there must exist some
moving force. The Ionic philosophers had assumed that matter has the
power or force required for movement immanent in itself. The air of
Anaximenes, of its own inherent power, transforms itself into other
kinds of matter. This doctrine Empedocles rejects. Matter is for him
absolutely dead and lifeless, without any principle of motion in
itself. There is, therefore, only one remaining possibility. Forces
acting upon matter from the outside must be assumed. And as the two
essential processes of the world, mixing and unmixing, are opposite in
character, so there must be two opposite forces. These he calls by the
names Love and Hate, or Harmony and Discord. Though these terms may
have an idealistic sound, Empedocles conceives them as entirely
physical and material forces. But he identifies the attractions and
repulsions of human beings, which we call love and hate, with the
universally operating forces of the material world. Human love and
{84} hate are but the manifestations in us of the mechanical forces of
attraction and repulsion at work in the world at large.
Empedocles taught the doctrine of periodic world-cycles. The
world-process is, therefore, properly speaking, circular, and has
neither beginning nor end. But in describing this process one must
begin somewhere. We will begin, then, with the sphairos (sphere). In
the primeval sphere the four elements are completely mixed, and
interpenetrate each other completely. Water is not separated off from
air, nor air from earth. All are chaotically mixed together. In any
portion of the sphere there must be an equal quantity of earth, air,
fire and water. The elements are thus in union, and the sole force
operative within the sphere is Love or Harmony. Hence the sphere is
called a "blessed god." Hate, however, exists all round the outside of
the sphere. Hate gradually penetrates from the circumference towards
the centre and introduces the process of separation and disunion of
the elements. This process continues till, like coming together with
like, the elements are wholly separated. All the water is together;
all the fire is together, and so on. When this process of
disintegration is complete, Hate is supreme and Love is entirely
driven out. But Love again begins to penetrate matter, to cause union
and mixture of the elements, and finally brings the world back to the
state of the original sphere. Then the same process begins again. At
what position in this circular movement is our present world to be
placed? The answer is that it is neither in the complete union of the
sphere, nor is it completely disintegrated. It is half-way between the
sphere and the stage of total {85} disintegration. It is proceeding
from the former towards the later, and Hate is gradually gaining the
upper hand. In the formation of the present world from the sphere the
first element to be separated off was air, next fire, then the earth.
Water is squeezed out of the earth by the rapidity of its rotation.
The sky is composed of two halves. One is of fire, and this is the
day. The other is dark matter with masses of fire scattered about in
it, and this is the night.
Empedocles believed in the transmigration of souls. He also put
forward a theory of sense-perception, the essential of which is that
like perceives like. The fire in us perceives external fire, and so
with the other elements. Sight is caused by effluences of the fire and
water of the eyes meeting similar effluences from external objects.
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