EMPEDOCLES (c. B.c.), Greek philosopher and statesman, a citizen of Akragas in Sicily. It seems that he carried on the democratic tradition of his distinguished family by helping to overthrow an oligarchic government which succeeded the tyranny in Agrigentum, but refused the invitation of the citi zens to become their king. Later he left the city, and died in the Peloponnese in 43o.
Of his poem on nature (vacs) there are left about 400 lines in unequal fragments out of the original 5,000; of the hymns of purification (KaOapµoi) less than zoo verses remain; of the other works, 'improbably assigned to him, nothing is known. His grand but obscure hexameters, of ter the example of Parmenides, de lighted Lucretius. Aristotle, it is said, called him the father of rhetoric, and Galen regarded him as the founder of the Italian medical school. To his contemporaries he seemed more than a mere man, and the people of Agrigentum have never ceased to honour his name ; even in modern times he has been celebrated by followers of Mazzini as the democrat of antiquity par excellence.
As his history is uncertain, so are his doctrines. He is at once a believer in Orphic mysteries, and a scientific thinker. There are, he holds, four ultimate unchangeable elements, four primal divinities, of which are made all structures in the world—fire, air, water, earth. These four roots of all things are eternally brought into union, and eternally parted by two active corporeal forces, love and strife—forces which can be seen working amongst men, but which really pervade the whole world. Nothing new comes or can come into being; the only change that can occur is a change in the juxtaposition of element with element.
Empedocles seems to have conceived a period when love was predominant, and all the elements formed one great sphere. Since that period discord gained more sway; the actual world was full of contrasts and oppositions, due to the combined action of both principles. His theory attempted to explain the separation of ele ments by strife, the formation of earth and sea, of sun and moon, of atmosphere. His most interesting views dealt with the origin of plants and animals, and with the physiology of man. As the ele ments combined through the work of love, there appeared quaint results—heads without necks, arms without shoulders. Then as these structures met, there were seen horned heads on human bodies, bodies of oxen with men's heads, and figures of double sex. But most of these disappeared as suddenly as they arose; only in those rare cases where the several parts were adapted to each other did the complex structures last. Soon various influences re duced the creatures of double sex to a male and a female, and the world was replenished with organic life. This theory seems a crude anticipation of the modern "survival of the fittest" theory.
As man, animal and plant are composed of the same elements in different proportion they have an identity of nature. They all have sense and understanding, mind in man being always de pendent upon the body. Hence the precepts of morality are with Empedocles largely dietetic. Knowledge is explained by the prin ciple that the several elements in things are perceived by the cor responding elements in ourselves. Like is known by like. The organs of sense are specially adapted to receive the effluxes from bodies around us; and in this way arises perception which is not merely passive. The heart, not the brain, is the organ of con sciousness. According to Aristotle, Empedocles made no distinc tion between perception and thought.
It is not easy to harmonize these theories with the Pythagorean theory of transmigration of souls which Empedocles seems to expound. Probably the doctrine that the divinity (8aLµcov) passes from element to element, nowhere finding a home, is a mystical way of teaching the continued identity of the principles which are at the bottom of every phase of development from inorganic na ture to man. At the top of the scale are the prophet and the physician, those who have best learned the secret of life; they are next to the divine. It is the business of the philosopher to lay bare the fundamental difference of elements, and to display the identity between what seem unconnected parts of the universe. See Diog. Laert. viii. ; Sext. Empiric. Adv. math. vii. 123 ; Simplicius, Phys. f. 24, f. 76. For text S. Karsten, "Empedoclis Agrigenti carminum reliquiae," in Reliq. phil. vet. (Amsterdam, 1838) ; F. W. A. Mullach, Frag. philos. Graec. vol. i. ; H. Stein, Empedoclis Agrigenti fragmenta (Bonn, 1882) ; Diels, Die Frgm. der Vorsokratiker vol. i. (4th ed., 1922) ; Ritter and Preller, Historic philosophiae (4th ed., Gotha, 1869) ; verse translation, W. E. Leonard (1go8). For criticism E. Zeller, Phil. der Griechen (Eng. trans., 1881) ; A. W. Beun, Greek Philosophers (1882) ; J. A. Symonds, Studies of the Greek Poets (3rd ed., 1893) ; Millerd, On the Interpretation of Empedocles (1908) ; T. Gomperz, Greek Thinkers, vol. i. (Eng. trans., i9oi) ; J. Burnett, Early Greek Philosophy (1920) giving trans. of the fragments in Diels; W. Windelband, Gesch. der abendl. Phil. im altertum (4th ed., 1923) ; Uberweg, Grund. der gesch. der phil. pt. 1. (1926).
(W. WAL.; X.)