p. 377. This is the punishment wherewith the Demiurge punishes, just as a smith forging iron, taking it from the fire, dips it in water. For Fire is the aether, whence the Demiurge casts the souls into the Sea; and the Earth is the ground. Whence he says, from water to Earth, from Earth to Air. This is what he says:—
into the beams
Of the radiant Sun, and he casts them into the whirls of aether
Each takes them from the other, but all hate them.
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 he says that the bodies of animals which are eaten are the dwellings of punished souls, and he teaches those who hear such [his] words to refrain[141] from companying with women, so that they may not cooperate and help in the deeds which Strife effects, ever undoing and rending asunder the work of Love.
Empedocles says that this is the greatest law of the government of the All, speaking somehow thus:—
There is a thing of Necessity, an ancient decree of the gods.
Eternal and sealed with broad oaths.[142]
thus calling Necessity the change by Strife of the One into many and that by Love of many into the One. He says, indeed, that there are four mortal gods, Fire, Water, Earth and Air; and two immortal unbegotten and enemies one to the other for ever [viz.] Strife and Love; and that Strife is ever unjust and grasping and rends asunder what belongs p. 379. to Love and takes it to itself; and that Love is ever good and anxious for unity and calls back to herself and leads and makes one the things rent asunder from the All and tortured and punished in creation by the Demiurge. In some such way does Empedocles philosophize for us on the genesis of the Cosmos and its destruction and its constitution established from good and evil.
And he says that there is a certain conceivable[143] third power which may be conceived[144] from these, speaking somehow like this:—