EMPE'DOCLES, a native of Agrigentum in Sicily, who flourished about me. 450: he was distinguished not ouly as a philosopher, but also for his knowledge of natural history and medicine, and as a poet and statesman. It is generally believed that he perished in the crater of Mount /Etna. The story that .he threw himself into it in order that by disappearing suddenly and without a trace, he might establish his claim to divinity, and the charge of arrogance founded upon that pretension, seems to have rested on a misconception of hie doctrine that the human soul (and consequently his own) is divine and immortal.
His mestere in philosophy are variously given. By some, like the Eleatas generally, he is called a Pythagorean, in consequence of a resemblance of doctrine in a few unessential points. But the prin ciples of his theory evidently show that he belongs to the Eleatic school, though the statement which makes him a disciple of Parme nides rests apparently upon no other foundation than a comparison of their systems; as, in like manner, the common employment of the mechanical physiology has led to an opinion that he was a hearer of his contemporary Auaxagoras.
He taught that originally All was one :—Ood, eternal and at rest : a sphere and a mixture (claims, iwia)—without a vacuum—in which the elements of things were held together in undistinguishablo confusion by love (4)1Xia)—the primal force which unites like to unlike. In a portion of this whole however, or, as he expresses it, iu the members of the Deity, strife (veiKes)—the force which binds like to like—prevailed and gave to the elements a tendency to separate themselves, whereby they first became perceptible as such, although the separation wee not so complete, but that each contained portions of the others. Hence arose the multiplicity of things : by the vivify log counteraction of love organic life was produced, not however so perfect and so full of design as it now appears ; but at first single limbs, then irregular combinations, till ultimately they received their present adjustments and perfection. But as the forces of love and hate are constantly acting upon each other for production or destruc tion, the present condition of things cannot persist for ever, and the world which, properly, is not the All, but only the ordered part of it, will again be reduced to a chaotic unity, out of which a new system will be formed, and so on for ever.
There is no real destruction of anything, only a change of combina tions. It must bo remarked that the primal forces, love and hate,
must not bo supposed to be extrinsically impressed upon matter ; on the contrary, while strife is inherent in the elements separately, love is in the mass of things—nay, more, is one with it—God. Of tho elements (which he seems to have been the first to exhibit as four distinct species of matter), fire, as the rarest and most powerful, he held to be the chief, and consequently the soul of all sentient and intellectual beings which issue from the central fire, or soul of the world. The soul migrates through animal and vegetable bodies in atonement for some guilt committed in its unembodied state when it is a dxmen ; of which he supposed that an infinite number existed. The seat of the daimon when in a human body is the blood.
Closely connected with his view of the objects of knowledge was his theory of human knowledge. In the impure separation of the elements it is only the predominant one that the senses can apprehend, and consequently, although man can know all the elements of the whole singly, he is unable te see them iu their perfect unity wherein consists their truth. Empedocles therefore rejects tho testimony of the senses, and maintains that pure intellect alone can arrive at a knowledge of the truth. This is the attribute of the Deity, for mau cannot overlook the work of love in all its extent ; and the true unity is only open to itself. Hence he was led to distinguish between the world, as presented to our senses (Kocreos alothrds), and its type the intellectual world (aticraos voirrils).
His explanation of the cognitive faculty, which rested upon the assumption that "like can only be known by like," is drawn naturally enough from his physical view. Man is capable of knowing outward things, since he is, like them, composed of the four elements, and of the two forces love and hate ; and it is especially by the presence of love within him that he is able to arrive at an intellectual knowledge of the whole, however imperfect and inferior to the divine.
(The Fragments of Empedoclos were published with a commentary by Fr. W. Sturz, Leipzig, 1805, 8vo; see also Empedoclis and Parme nidis Fragmenta, ex Cod. Tour. Bibl. restituta et illustrata, ab A. Peyron, Lips. 1810, 8vo ; Karsten, Empedoclis Agrigentini Carmin. Belk., in vol. ii. of Philosophorunt Greecortem veteran& retiquire., Amst., 1838; and Zeller, die Philosophic dcr Griech, Tubingeu, 1844.