Empedokles held various opinions in common with the Pythagoreans and the brotherhood of the Orphic mysteries — especially that of the metempsychosis. He represented himself as having passed through prior states of existence, as a boy, a girl, a shrub, a bird, and a fish. He proclaims it as an obligation of justice, absolute and universal, not to kill anything that had life: he denounces as an abomination the sacrificing of or eating of an animal, in whom perhaps might dwell the soul of a deceased friend or brother.[136] His religious faith, however, and his opinions about Gods, Dæmons, and the human soul, stood apart (mostly in a different poem) from his doctrines on kosmology and physiology. In common with many Pythagoreans, he laid great stress on the existence of Dæmons (of intermediate order and power between Gods and men), some of whom had been expelled from the Gods in consequence of their crimes, and were condemned to pass a long period of exile, as souls embodied in various men or animals. He laments the misery of the human soul, in himself as well as in others, condemned to this long period of expiatory degradation, before they could regain the society of the Gods.[137] In one of his remaining fragments, he announces himself almost as a God upon earth, and professes his willingness as well as ability to impart to a favoured pupil the most wonderful gifts — powers to excite or abate the winds, to bring about rain or dry weather, to raise men from the dead.[138] He was in fact a man of universal pretensions; not merely an expositor of nature, but a rhetorician, poet, physician, prophet, and conjurer. Gorgias the rhetor had been personally present at his magical ceremonies.[139]
[136] Emp. Frag. v. 380-410, Karsten; Plutarch, De Esu Carnium, p. 997-8.
Aristot. Rhetoric. i. 13, 2: ἐστὶ γὰρ, ὃ μαντεύονταί τι πάντες, φύσει κοινὸν δίκαιον καὶ ἄδικον, κἂν μηδεμία κοινωνία πρὸς ἀλλήλους ᾖ, μηδὲ συνθήκη — ὡς Ἐμπεδοκλῆς λέγει περὶ τοῦ μὴ κτείνειν τὸ ἔμψυχον· τοῦτο γὰρ οὐ τισὶ μὲν δίκαιον, τισὶ δ’ οὐ δίκαιον,
|
Ἀλλὰ τὸ μὲν πάντων νόμιμον διά τ’
εὐρυμέδοντος Αἰθέρος ἠνεκέως τέταται διά τ’ ἀπλέτου αὐγῆς. |
Sext. Empiric. adv. Mathem. ix. 127.
[137] Emp. Frag. v. 5-18, Karst.; compare Herod. ii. 123; Plato, Phædrus, 55, p. 246 C.; Plutarch, De Isid. et Osirid. c. 26. Plutarch observes in another place on the large proportion of religious mysticism blended with the philosophy of Empedokles — Σωκράτης, φασμάτων καὶ δεισιδαιμονίας ἀναπλέω φιλοσοφίαν ἀπὸ Πυθαγόρου καὶ Ἐμπεδοκλέους δεξάμενος, εὖ μάλα βεβακχευμένην, &c. (Plutarch, De Genio Socratis, p. 580, C.)
See Fr. Aug. Ukert, Ueber Daemonen, Heroen, und Genien, p. 151.
[138] Emp. Fr. v. 390-425, Karst.
[139] Diog. Laert. viii. 59.
Complaint of Empedokles on the impossibility of finding out truth.