... Earth that envelops the man.
Empedokles and Parmenides.
106. At the very outset of his poem, Empedokles is careful to mark the difference between himself and previous inquirers. He speaks angrily of those who, though their experience was only partial, professed to have found the whole (fr. [2]); he even calls this “madness” (fr. [4]). No doubt he is thinking of Parmenides. His own position is not, however, sceptical. He only deprecates the attempt to construct a theory of the universe off-hand instead of trying to understand each thing we come across “in the way in which it is clear” (fr. [4]). And this means that we must not, like Parmenides, reject the assistance of the senses. Weak though they are (fr. [2]), they are the only channels through which knowledge can enter our minds at all. We soon discover, however, that Empedokles is not very mindful of his own warnings. He too sets up a system which is to explain everything, though that system is no longer a monistic one.
It is often said that this system was an attempt to mediate between Parmenides and Herakleitos. It is not easy, however, to find any trace of specially Herakleitean doctrine in it, and it would be truer to say that it aimed at mediating between Eleaticism and the senses. He repeats, almost in the same words, the Eleatic argument for the sole reality and indestructibility of “what is” (frs. [11-15]); and his idea of the “Sphere” seems to be derived from the Parmenidean description of the universe as it truly is.[[579]] Parmenides had held that the reality which underlies the illusory world presented to us by the senses was a corporeal, spherical, continuous, eternal, and immovable plenum, and it is from this that Empedokles starts. Given the sphere of Parmenides, he seems to have said, How are we to get from it to the world we know? How are we to introduce motion into the immovable plenum? Now Parmenides need not have denied the possibility of motion within the Sphere, though he was bound to deny all motion of the Sphere itself; but such an admission on his part, had he made it, would not have served to explain anything. If any part of the Sphere were to move, the room of the displaced matter must at once be taken by other matter, for there is no empty space. This, however, would be of precisely the same kind as the matter it had displaced; for all “that is” is one. The result of the motion would be precisely the same as that of rest; it could account for no change. But, Empedokles must have asked, is this assumption of perfect homogeneity in the Sphere really necessary? Evidently not; it is simply the old unreasoned feeling that existence must be one. If, instead of this, we were to assume a number of existent things, it would be quite possible to apply all that Parmenides says of reality to each of them, and the forms of existence we know might be explained by the mingling and separation of those realities. The conception of “elements” (στοιχεῖα), to use a later term,[[580]] was found, and the required formula follows at once. So far as concerns particular things, it is true, as our senses tell us, that they come into being and pass away; but, if we have regard to the ultimate elements of which they are composed, we shall say with Parmenides that “what is” is uncreated and indestructible (fr. [17]).
The “four roots.”
107. The “four roots” of all things (fr. [6]) which Empedokles assumed were those that have become traditional—Fire, Air, Earth, and Water. It is to be noticed, however, that he does not call Air ἀήρ, but αἰθήρ, and this must be because he wished to avoid any confusion with what had hitherto been meant by the former word. He had, in fact, made the great discovery that atmospheric air is a distinct corporeal substance, and is not to be identified with empty space on the one hand or rarefied mist on the other. Water is not liquid air, but something quite different.[[581]] This truth Empedokles demonstrated by means of the apparatus known as the klepsydra, and we still possess the verses in which he applied his discovery to the explanation of respiration and the motion of the blood (fr. [100]). Aristotle laughs at those who try to show there is no empty space by shutting up air in water-clocks and torturing wineskins. They only prove, he says, that air is a thing.[[582]] That, however, is exactly what Empedokles intended to prove, and it was one of the most important discoveries in the early history of science. It will be convenient for us to translate the αἰθήρ of Empedokles by “air”; but we must be careful in that case not to render the word ἀήρ in the same way. Anaxagoras seems to have been the first to use it of atmospheric air.
Empedokles also called the “four roots” by the names of certain divinities—“shining Zeus, life-bringing Hera, Aidoneus, and Nestis” (fr. [6])—though there is some doubt as to how these names are to be apportioned among the elements. Nestis is said to have been a Sicilian water-goddess, and the description of her shows that she stands for Water; but there is a conflict of opinion as to the other three. This, however, need not detain us.[[583]] We are already prepared to find that Empedokles called the elements gods; for all the early thinkers had spoken in this way of whatever they regarded as the primary substance. We must only remember that the word is not used in its religious sense. Empedokles did not pray or sacrifice to the elements, and the use of divine names is in the main an accident of the poetical form in which he cast his system.
Empedokles regarded the “roots of all things” as eternal. Nothing can come from nothing or pass away into nothing (fr. [12]); what is is, and there is no room for coming into being and passing away (fr. [8]). Further, Aristotle tells us, he taught that they were unchangeable.[[584]] This Empedokles expressed by saying that “they are what they are” (frs. [17], [34]; [21], [13]), and are “always alike.” Again, they are all “equal,” a statement which seemed strange to Aristotle,[[585]] but was quite intelligible in the days of Empedokles. Above all, the elements are ultimate. All other bodies, as Aristotle puts it, might be divided till you came to the elements; but Empedokles could give no further account of these without saying (as he did not) that there is an element of which Fire and the rest are in turn composed.[[586]]
The “four roots” are given as an exhaustive enumeration of the elements (fr. [23] sub fin.); for they account for all the qualities presented by the world to the senses. When we find, as we do, that the school of medicine which regarded Empedokles as its founder identified the four elements with the “opposites,” the hot and the cold, the moist and the dry, which formed the theoretical foundation of its system, we see at once how the theory is related to previous views of reality.[[587]] To put it shortly, what Empedokles did was to take the opposites of Anaximander and to declare that they were “things,” each of which was real in the Parmenidean sense. We must remember that the conception of quality had not yet been formed. Anaximander had no doubt regarded his “opposites” as things; though, before the time of Parmenides, no one had fully realised how much was implied in saying that anything is a thing. That is the stage we have now reached. There is still no conception of quality, but there is a clear apprehension of what is involved in saying that a thing is.
Aristotle twice[[588]] makes the statement that, though Empedokles assumes four elements, he treats them as two, opposing Fire to all the rest. This, he says, we can see for ourselves from his poem. So far as the general theory of the elements goes, it is impossible to see anything of the sort; but, when we come to the origin of the world ([§ 112]), we shall find that Fire certainly plays a leading part, and this may be what Aristotle meant. It is also true that in the biology ([§ 114]–[116]) Fire fulfils a unique function, while the other three act more or less in the same way. But we must remember that it has no pre-eminence over the rest: all are equal.