This is the Empedoklean cycle of things,[112] divine or predestined, without beginning or end: perpetual substitution of new for old compounds — constancy only in the general principle of combination and dissolution. The Kosmos which Empedokles undertakes to explain, takes its commencement from the period of complete empire of Love, or compact and undisturbed union of all the elements. This he conceives and divinises under the name of Sphærus — as One sphere, harmonious, uniform, and universal, having no motion, admitting no parts or separate existences within it, exhibiting no one of the four elements distinctly, “instabilis tellus, innabilis unda” — a sort of chaos.[113] At the time prescribed by Fate or Necessity, the action of Enmity recommenced, penetrating gradually through the interior of Sphærus, “agitating the members of the God one after another,”[114] disjoining the parts from each other, and distending the compact ball into a vast porous mass. This mass, under the simultaneous and conflicting influences of Love and Enmity, became distributed partly into homogeneous portions, where each of the four elements was accumulated by itself — partly into compounds or individual substances, where two or more elements were found in conjunction. Like had an appetite for Like — Air for Air, Fire for Fire, and so forth: and a farther extension of this appetite brought about the mixture of different elements in harmonious compounds. First, the Air disengaged itself, and occupied a position surrounding the central mass of Earth and Water: next, the Fire also broke forth, and placed itself externally to the Air, immediately in contact with the outermost crystalline sphere, formed of condensed and frozen air, which formed the wall encompassing the Kosmos. A remnant of Fire and Air still remained embodied in the Earth, but the great mass of both so distributed themselves, that the former occupied most part of one hemisphere, the latter most part of the other.[115] The rapid and uniform rotation of the Kosmos, caused by the exterior Fire, compressed the interior elements, squeezed the water out of the earth like perspiration from the living body, and thus formed the sea. The same rotation caused the earth to remain unmoved, by counterbalancing and resisting its downward pressure or gravity.[116] In the course of the rotation, the light hemisphere of Fire, and the comparatively dark hemisphere of Air, alternately came above the horizon: hence the interchange of day and night. Empedokles (like the Pythagoreans) supposed the sun to be not self-luminous, but to be a glassy or crystalline body which collected and reflected the light from the hemisphere of Fire. He regarded the fixed stars as fastened to the exterior crystalline sphere, and revolving along with it, but the planets as moving free and detached from any sphere.[117] He supposed the alternations of winter and summer to arise from a change in the proportions of Air and Fire in the atmospheric regions: winter was caused by an increase of the Air, both in volume and density, so as to drive back the exterior Fire to a greater distance from the Earth, and thus to produce a diminution of heat and light: summer was restored when the Fire, in its turn increasing, extruded a portion of the Air, approached nearer to the Earth, and imparted to the latter more heat and light.[118] Empedokles farther supposed (and his contemporaries, Anaxagoras and Diogenes, held the same opinion) that the Earth was round and flat at top and bottom, like a drum or tambourine: that its surface had been originally horizontal, in reference to the rotation of the Kosmos around it, but that it had afterwards tilted down to the south and upward towards the north, so as to lie aslant instead of horizontal. Hence he explained the fact that the north pole of the heavens now appeared obliquely elevated above the horizon.[119]
[112] Emp. Frag. v. 96, Karst., p. 98:
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Οὕτως ᾖ μὲν ἓν ἐκ πλεόνων μεμάθηκε
φύεσθαι, ἠδὲ πάλιν διαφυντὸς ἑνὸς πλέον ἐκτελέθουσι, τῇ μὲν γίγνονταί τε καὶ οὔ σφισιν ἔμπεδος αἰών· ᾗ δὲ τάδ’ ἀλλάσσοντα διαμπερὲς οὐδαμὰ λήγει, ταύτῃ δ’ αἰὲν ἔασιν ἀκίνητα κατὰ κύκλον. |
Also:—
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καὶ γὰρ καὶ παρὸς ἧν τε καὶ ἔσσεται οὐδέ
ποτ’, οἴω, τούτων ἀμφοτέρων (Love and Discord) κεινώσεται ἄσπετος αἰών. |
These are new Empedoklean verses, derived from the recently published fragments of Hippolytus (Hær. Refut.) printed by Stein, v. 110, in his collection of the Fragments of Empedokles, p. 43. Compare another passage in the same treatise of Hippolytus, p. 251.
[113] Emped. Fr. v. 59, Karsten:
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Οὕτως ἁρμονίης πυκινῷ κρυφῷ ἐστήρικται σφαίρος κυκλοτέρης, μονιῇ περιηγέϊ γαίων. |
Plutarch, De Facie in Orbe Lunæ, c. 12.
About the divinity ascribed by Empedokles to Sphærus, see Aristot. Metaphys. B. 4, p. 1000, a. 29. ἅπαντα γὰρ ἐκ τούτου (νείκους) τἄλλά ἐστι πλὴν ὁ θεός (i.e. Sphærus). — Εἰ γὰρ μὴ ἦν τὸ νεῖκος ἐν τοῖς πράγμασι, ἓν ἂν ἦν ἅπαντα, ὡς φησίν (Empedokles). See Preller, Hist. Philos. ex Font. Loc. Contexta, sect. 171, 172, ed. 3.