EMPEDOCLES, Greek philosopher : b. Agrigentum, Sicily, about 460 B.c His fellow citizens esteemed him so highly that they wished to make him king; but being an enemy to all political forms which elevate a few above their fellows, he refused their offer, and prevailed on them to abolish aristocracy and introduce a democratical form of govern ment. Aristotle states that he died in ob scurity at the age of 60 years, in the Pelopon nesus, but there are various legends respect ing the manner and place of his death. Empedocles presented his philosophy in a poet ical form. His general point of view is deter mined by the influence of the Eleatic school upon the physical theories of the Ionic philos ophers. He assumed four primitive independent substances—air, water, fire and earth, which he designates often by the mythical names Zeus, Hera, etc. These four elements, as they were called, kept their place till modern chemistry dis lodged them. Along with material elements he affirmed the existence of two moving and oper ating powers, love and hate, or affinity and an tipathy, the first as the uniting principle, the second as the separating. The contrast between
matter and power, or force, is thus brought out more strongly by Empedocles than by previous philosophers. His theory of the universe seems to assume a gradual development of the perfect out of the imperfect and a periodical return of things to the elemental state, in order to be again separated and a new world of phenomena formed. Of his opinions on special phenomena may be mentioned his doctrine of emanations, by which, in connection with the maxim that like is known only by like, he thought to ex plain the nature of perception by the senses. He attempted to give a moral application to the old doctrine of the transmigration of souls, his views of which resembled those of Pythagoras. The fragments of Empedocles have been edited by Sturz (1805) ; Karsten (1838) ; and Stein (1852). Consult monographs by Lommatsch (1830) Raynaud (1848) ' • and Gladisch (1858) ; also Windelband, (Geschichte der griechischen Philosophie) (3d ed., Munich 1912).