None of the remaining fragments of Empedokles are more remarkable than a few in which he deplores the impossibility of finding out any great or comprehensive truth, amidst the distraction and the sufferings of our short life. Every man took a different road, confiding only in his own accidental experience or particular impressions; but no man could obtain or communicate satisfaction about the whole.[140]
[140] Emp. Fr. v. 34, ed. Karst., p. 88.
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παῦρον δὲ ζώης ἀβίου μέρος ἀθλήσαντες ὠκύμοροι, κάπνοιο δίκην ἀρθέντες, ἀπέπταν, αὐτὸ μόνον πεισθέντες ὅτῳ προσέκυρσεν ἕκαστος, πάντοσ’ ἐλαυνόμενοι· τὸ δὲ οὖλον ἐπεύχεται εὑρεῖν αὔτως. οὔτ’ ἐπιδερκτὰ τάδ’ ἀνδράσιν οὔτ’ ἐπακουστὰ οὔτε νόῳ περιληπτά. |
Theory of Anaxagoras — denied generation and destruction — recognises only mixture and severance of pre-existing kinds of matter.
Anaxagoras of Klazomenæ, a friend of the Athenian Perikles, and contemporary of Empedokles, was a man of far simpler and less ambitious character: devoted to physical contemplation and geometry, without any of those mystical pretentions common among the Pythagoreans. His doctrines were set forth in prose, and in the Ionic dialect.[141] His theory, like all those of his age, was all-comprehensive in its purpose, starting from a supposed beginning, and shewing how heaven, earth, and the inhabitants of earth, had come into those appearances which were exhibited to sense. He agreed with Empedokles in departing from the point of view of Thales and other Ionic theorists, who had supposed one primordial matter, out of which, by various transformations, other sensible things were generated — and into which, when destroyed, they were again resolved. Like Empedokles, and like Parmenides previously, he declared that generation, understood in this sense, was a false and impossible notion: that no existing thing could have been generated, or could be destroyed, or could undergo real transformation into any other thing different from what it was.[142] Existing things were what they were, possessing their several inherent properties: there could be no generation except the putting together of these things in various compounds, nor any destruction except the breaking up of such compounds, nor any transformation except the substitution of one compound for another.
[141] Aristotel. Ethic. Eudem. i. 4, 5; Diogen. Laert. ii. 10.
[142] Anaxagor. Fr. 22, p. 135, ed. Schaubach. τὸ δὲ γίνεσθαι καὶ ἀπόλλυσθαι οὐκ ὀρθῶς νομίζουσιν οἱ Ἕλληνες. Οὐδὲν γὰρ χρῆμα γίνεται, οὐδὲ ἀπόλλυται, ἀλλ’ ἀπ’ ἐόντων χρημάτων συμμίσγεταί τε καὶ διακρίνεται· καὶ οὕτως ἂν ὀρθῶς καλοῖεν τό τε γίνεσθαι συμμίσγεσθαι καὶ τὸ ἀπόλλυσθαι διακρίνεσθαι.
Homœomeries — small particles of diverse kinds of matter, all mixed together.
But Anaxagoras did not accept the Empedoklean four elements as the sum total of first substances. He reckoned all the different sorts of matter as original and primæval existences: he supposed them all to lie ready made, in portions of all sizes, whereof there was no greatest and no least.[143] Particles of the same sort he called Homœomeries: the aggregates of which formed bodies of like parts; wherein the parts were like each other and like the whole. Flesh, bone, blood, fire,[144] earth, water, gold, &c., were aggregations of particles mostly similar, in which each particle was not less flesh, bone, and blood, than the whole mass.
[143] Anaxag. Fr. 5, ed. Schaub, p. 94.