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fragmentary and imperfect forms, heads and arms and eyes coming into life, yet missing their congruous parts. Such monstrosities soon perished. But when one happened to be joined to another in natural fitness, it survived. So there was a progression from the imperfect to the more perfect. Moreover, although in the world which now exists, differentiating and individualizing Strife is in the ascendant, Love will one day have its way again and draw all once more back to the sphere-shaped fourfold harmony. Yet this Love-ruled harmony will not persist, but out of it new mixtures will still proceed, a Strifecycle forever alternating with a Love-cycle. Out of this same Love our perceptions and desires spring, the elements which form us seeking their similars elsewhere. Only like can be known by like. With these physical doctrines Empedocles combined, for no obvious reason, the Pythagorean doctrine of the transmigration of souls.

To sum up, the teaching of Empedocles is a composite, and includes fragments of all the theories current in his time. His own contributions are 1, the doctrine of the four elements; 2, the perception that for the fashioning of a world, forces are as needful as material; 3, the notion of alternating world-cycles; 4, vague hints of evolution and even of natural selection; and 5, cognition by similars. To have four or five original ideas is to be a wealthy man indeed. Those of Empedocles were all taken up into subsequent philosophy, and have ever since enriched the blood of the world.

The Greek text of the fragments of Empedocles, with Latin translation, may be found in Mullach's 'Fragmenta Philosophorum Græcorum,' Vol. i.; selections, with Latin comment, arranged so as best to exhibit the philosophy, in Ritter and Preller's 'Historia Philosophiæ'; an English translation, in the fifth chapter of Burnet's 'Early Greek Philosophy; the life, in the eighth Book of Diogenes Laertius; discussions of the philosophy, in all the histories of Greek Philosophy especially in Burnet, in Zeller's 'Pre-Socratic Philosophy,' Vol. ii., in Zeller's small 'Greek Philosophy,' and in Windelband's 'Geschichte der alten Philosophie.'

[The mere fact that some four hundred and eighty verses of Empedocles have been preserved is doubtless a tribute to his high rank as a poet. Certainly no other among the early philosophers has had so happy a fate. Enough remains to indicate his lofty creative imagination, as well as the splendid march of his verse. A few of the chief fragments are therefore presented here in a metrical version, by W. C. Lawton. The other passages, needed to illustrate Professor Palmer's study, follow in the prose form given them by John Burnet, M. A., in his history of early Greek philosophy.]

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FROM THE POEM ON NATURE

MPEDOCLES was without doubt a leader of mystics, and one who claimed for himself superhuman nature and wisdom; but it seems equally true,- as true as of Plato, of Swedenborg, or of Emerson,- that he was his own first and sincerest believer. In particular, the lines in which he declares his recollections of immortality and of a more blest divine existence, are as earnest as anything in Plato or in Wordsworth.

THERE is a doom of fate, an ancient decree of immortals,
Never to be unmade, by amplest pledges attested:
That, if a spirit divine, who shares in the life everlasting,
Through transgression defile his glorious body by bloodshed,
Or if he perjure himself by swearing unto a falsehood,
Thrice ten thousand seasons he wanders apart from the Blessèd
Passing from birth unto birth through every species of mortal,
Changing ever the paths of life, yet ever unresting:

Even as I now roam, from gods far-wandered, an exile,

Yielding to maddening strife.

These, as Plutarch and others testify, are the opening lines in the Prelude of Empedocles's great poem on Nature. Other and briefer fragments continue the same train of thought.

ONCE already have I as a youth been born, as a maiden,
Bush, and wingèd bird, and silent fish in the waters.
After what horrors, and after how long and blissful existence,
Thus am I wretchedly doomed to abide in the meadows of mor-

tals!

Loudly I wept and wailed at beholding the place unfamiliar.

Joyless the place, where

Murder abides, and Strife, with the other races of Troubles.

.

The belief in transmigration, which we are wont to associate especially with the Pythagorean teachings, is nowhere more earnestly and vividly expressed than by Empedocles. The conviction that Man's soul is a fallen exile from a higher diviner sphere, to which he may hope to return only after long purgatorial atonement in earthly incarnations, all this has been even more magnificently elaborated in Platonic dialogues like the Phædrus and the Phædo; but Plato himself may well owe much of his loftiest inspiration to this Sicilian

seer.

The theory of the four elements is clearly stated in a three-line fragment of the same Prelude:

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HEARKEN and learn that four, at the first, are the sources of all

things:

Fire, and water, and earth, and lofty ether unbounded.

Thence springs all that is, that shall be, or hath been aforetime.

Empedocles seems to have rivaled Lucretius himself in the picturesque vividness of his similes. Here, for instance, is an attempt to illustrate how the manifold forms of the visible world might well arise from the mingling of these few elements:

JUST as men who the painter's craft have thoroughly mastered
Fashion in many a tint their picture, an offering sacred;
When they have taken in hand their paints of various colors,
Mingling skillfully more of the one and less of another,

Out of these they render the figures like unto all things;

Trees they cause to appear, and the semblance of men and of

women,

Beasts of the field, and birds, and fish that inhabit the waters,
Even the gods, whose honors are greatest, whose life is unending:-
Be not deceived, for such, and nowise other, the fountain
Whence all mortals spring, whatever their races unnumbered.

Incidentally we see clearly that while the painter's art has made many a stride from Homer's time to Empedocles's day, yet “Art is still religion"; the masterpiece is as a matter of course an anathēma, an altar-piece.

Among the other fragments of the Proem is the singular invocation of the Muse. The poetic quality is rather disappointing. Despite his hatred of Strife, Empedocles has evidently just indulged in rather strong polemic; perhaps against those who profess to teach more than man may know, for the invocation begins thus:

ONLY do ye, O gods, remove from my tongue their madness;
Make ye to flow from a mouth that is holy a fountain unsullied.
Thou, O white-armed Virgin, the Muse who rememberest all things,
Whatsoe'er it is lawful to utter to men that are mortal
Bring me, from Piety driving a chariot easily guided.

It is clear from many such passages, that Empedocles claimed for himself not merely a poetic inspiration but an absolutely superhuman nature. It is not easy to find anywhere a more magnificent and sublime egotism than his. The most famous passage of this character is not from his great work on Nature (or Creation), but is found in the 'Katharmoi' (Poem of Purifications): —

O My friends, whoso in Acragas's beautiful city

Have your dwelling aloft; whose hearts are set upon virtue;
Reverent harbors of guests, who have no share in dishonor,—
Greeting! But I as a god divine, no longer a mortal,
Dwell with you, by all in reverence held, as is fitting,

Girt with fillets about, and crowned with wreaths of rejoicing.
Whatsoever the folk whose prosperous cities I enter,

There I of women and men am revered. By thousands they follow, Questioning where they may seek for the path that leadeth to profit. These are in need of prophetic words, and others, in illness,

Since they have long been racked with the grievous pangs of diseases,

Crave that I utter the charm whose power is sovran in all things. Yet pray why lay stress upon this, as were it a marvel

If I surpass mankind, who are mortal and utterly wretched?

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OTHER FRAGMENTS FROM THE POEM ON NATURE

ND thou shalt learn all the drugs that are a defense against ills and old age, since for thee alone shall I accomplish all this. Thou shalt arrest the violence of the weariless winds that arise and sweep the earth, laying waste the cornfields with their breath; and again, when thou so desirest, thou shalt bring their blasts back again with a rush. Thou shalt cause for men a seasonable drought after the dark rains, and again after the summer drought thou shalt produce the streams that feed the trees as they pour down from the sky. Thou shalt bring back from Hades the life of a dead man.

Fools! for they have no far-reaching thoughts who deem that what before was not comes into being, or that aught can perish and be utterly destroyed. For it cannot be that aught can arise from what in no way is, and it is impossible and unheard-of that what is should perish; for it will always be, wherever one may keep putting it.

I shall tell thee a twofold tale. At one time things grew to be one only out of many; at another, that divided up to be many instead of one. There is a double becoming of perishable things, and a double passing away. The coming together of all things brings one generation into being and destroys it; the other grows

up and is scattered as things become divided. And these things never cease, continually changing places, at one time all uniting in one through Love, at another each borne in different directions by the repulsions of Strife.

For of a truth, they [i. e., Love and Strife] were aforetime and shall be; nor ever, methinks, will boundless time be emptied of that pair. And they prevail in turn as the circle comes round, and pass away before one another, and increase in their appointed turn.

For if thou takest them [trees and plants] to the close recesses of thy heart and watchest over them kindly with faultless care, then thou shalt have all these things in abundance throughout. thy life, and thou shalt gain many others from them; for each grows ever true to its own character, according as its nature is. But if thou strivest after things of a different kind, as is the way with men, ten thousand woes await thee to blunt thy careful thoughts. All at once they will cease to live when the time comes round, desiring each to reach its own kind: for know that all things have wisdom and a share of thought.

It is not possible for us to set God before our eyes, or to lay hold of him with our hands, which is the broadest way of persuasion that leads into the heart of man. For he is not furnished with a human head on his body, two branches do not sprout from his shoulders, he has no feet, no swift knees, nor hairy parts; but he is only a sacred and unutterable Mind, flashing through the whole world with rapid thoughts.

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FROM THE POEM OF PURIFICATIONS

ND there was among them a man of rare knowledge, most skilled in all manner of wise works, a man who had won the utmost wealth of wisdom; for whensoever he strained with all his mind, he easily saw everything of all the things that are now [though he lived] ten, yea, twenty generations of men ago.

But at the last, they appear among mortal men as prophets, song-writers, physicians, and princes; and thence they rise up as gods exalted in honor, sharing the hearth of the other gods and the same table; free from human woes, safe from destiny, and incapable of hurt.