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EMPEDOCLES was born at Agrigentum in Sicily. He came of an old family, and inherited much wealth, a large part of which was spent in bestowing dowries on the poor maidens of the city. He took the popular side in politics, and gained such influence that he was offered the dictatorship of the republic. This he refused; preferring the spiritual influence following from his wide knowledge, his utterance of mystical and oracular sayings, and his free-handed liberality. Like Pythagoras and Plato, he is said to have spent much time in Eastern travel. Few details of his life are known to us with certainty; the story of his suicide in the crater of Mount Etna is but one of many fables reported of him.
His philosophical principles were embodied in a poem, of which a few fragments have survived. The distinctive principle is the Evolution of the world from the four elements of Fire, Air, Water, and Earth; while the reverse process of Dissolution was going on simultaneously under the varying struggle between the opposing forces of attraction and repulsion, metaphorically spoken of as Love and Hate. This principle, far more nearly approaching the truth than the vague attempts of the earlier Ionian school, he applied in detailed explanation both of Kosmos and of living organisms. He says--
- "Fools who think aught can begin to be which formerly was not,
- Or that aught which is can wholly decay and perish;
- This too is truth I now unfold; no natural birth-time
- Is there of mortal things, nor is death's destruction final;
- Nothing is there but a mingling, and then separation of the mingled;
- These being called a birth and a death by ignorant mortals."
From Pythagoras, or perhaps from independent converse with Egyptian or Eastern thinkers, Empedocles adopted the doctrine of Metempsychosis. The sufferings of this and other lives were in expiation of previous sins. Only by gradual mounting upward through the scale of existence could the society of the gods be regained.
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| This biography is
reprinted from The New Calendar of Great Men. Ed. Frederic
Harrison. London: Macmillan and Co., 1920. |
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