EMPEDOCLES
The latest of the important pre-Socratic philosophers
of the Italic school was Empedocles, who was born
about 494 B.C. and lived to the age of sixty. These
dates make Empedocles strictly contemporary with
Anaxagoras, a fact which we shall do well to bear in
mind when we come to consider the latter's philosophy
in the succeeding chapter. Like Pythagoras, Empedocles
is an imposing figure. Indeed, there is much
of similarity between the personalities, as between the
doctrines, of the two men. Empedocles, like Pythagoras,
was a physician; like him also he was the founder
of a cult. As statesman, prophet, physicist, physician,
reformer, and poet he showed a versatility that,
coupled with profundity, marks the highest genius.
In point of versatility we shall perhaps hardly find
his equal at a later day—unless, indeed, an exception
be made of Eratosthenes. The myths that have
grown about the name of Empedocles show that he
was a remarkable personality. He is said to have been
an awe-inspiring figure, clothing himself in Oriental
splendor and moving among mankind as a superior
being. Tradition has it that he threw himself into the
crater of a volcano that his otherwise unexplained
disappearance might lead his disciples to believe that
he had been miraculously translated; but tradition
goes on to say that one of the brazen slippers of the
philosopher was thrown up by the volcano, thus revealing
his subterfuge. Another tradition of far more
credible aspect asserts that Empedocles retreated
from Italy, returning to the home of his fathers in
Peloponnesus to die there obscurely. It seems odd
that the facts regarding the death of so great a man,
at so comparatively late a period, should be obscure;
but this, perhaps, is in keeping with the personality
of the man himself. His disciples would hesitate
to ascribe a merely natural death to so inspired a
prophet.
Empedocles appears to have been at once an observer
and a dreamer. He is credited with noting that the
pressure of air will sustain the weight of water in an
inverted tube; with divining, without the possibility
of proof, that light has actual motion in space; and
with asserting that centrifugal motion must keep the
heavens from falling. He is credited with a great
sanitary feat in the draining of a marsh, and his knowledge
of medicine was held to be supernatural. Fortunately,
some fragments of the writings of Empedocles
have come down to us, enabling us to judge at
first hand as to part of his doctrines; while still more is
known through the references made to him by Plato,
Aristotle, and other commentators. Empedocles was
a poet whose verses stood the test of criticism.
In this regard he is in a like position with
Parmenides; but in neither case are the preserved
fragments sufficient to enable us fully to estimate their
author's scientific attainments. Philosophical writings
are obscure enough at the best, and they perforce
become doubly so when expressed in verse. Yet there
are certain passages of Empedocles that are unequivocal
and full of interest. Perhaps the most important
conception which the works of Empedocles reveal to
us is the denial of anthropomorphism as applied to
deity. We have seen how early the anthropomorphic
conception was developed and how closely it was all
along clung to; to shake the mind free from it then was
a remarkable feat, in accomplishing which Empedocles
took a long step in the direction of rationalism. His
conception is paralleled by that of another physician,
Alcmæon, of Proton, who contended that man's ideas
of the gods amounted to mere suppositions at the very
most. A rationalistic or sceptical tendency has been
the accompaniment of medical training in all ages.
The words in which Empedocles expresses his
conception of deity have been preserved and are well
worth quoting: "It is not impossible,'' he says, "to
draw near (to god) even with the eyes or to take hold
of him with our hands, which in truth is the best
highway of persuasion in the mind of man; for he has
no human head fitted to a body, nor do two shoots
branch out from the trunk, nor has he feet, nor swift
legs, nor hairy parts, but he is sacred and ineffable
mind alone, darting through the whole world with
swift thoughts.'' [56]
How far Empedocles carried his denial of anthropomorphism
is illustrated by a reference of Aristotle,
who asserts "that Empedocles regards god as most
lacking in the power of perception; for he alone does
not know one of the elements, Strife (hence), of perishable
things.'' It is difficult to avoid the feeling that
Empedocles here approaches the modern philosophical
conception that God, however postulated as immutable,
must also be postulated as unconscious, since intelligence,
as we know it, is dependent upon the transmutations
of matter. But to urge this thought would be
to yield to that philosophizing tendency which has
been the bane of interpretation as applied to the
ancient thinkers.
Considering for a moment the more tangible
accomplishments of Empedocles, we find it alleged that one
of his "miracles'' consisted of the preservation of a
dead body without putrefaction for some weeks after
death. We may assume from this that he had gained
in some way a knowledge of embalming. As he was
notoriously fond of experiment, and as the body in
question (assuming for the moment the authenticity
of the legend) must have been preserved without
disfigurement, it is conceivable even that he had hit upon
the idea of injecting the arteries. This, of course, is
pure conjecture; yet it finds a certain warrant, both in
the fact that the words of Pythagoras lead us to believe
that the arteries were known and studied, and in
the fact that Empedocles' own words reveal him also
as a student of the vascular system. Thus Plutarch
cites Empedocles as believing "that the ruling part is
not in the head or in the breast, but in the blood;
wherefore in whatever part of the body the more of
this is spread in that part men excel.''
[57]
And Empedocles' own words, as preserved by Stobæus, assert
"(the heart) lies in seas of blood which dart in opposite
directions, and there most of all intelligence centres for
men; for blood about the heart is intelligence in the case
of man.'' All this implies a really remarkable appreciation
of the dependence of vital activities upon the blood.
This correct physiological conception, however, was
by no means the most remarkable of the ideas to which
Empedoeles was led by his anatomical studies. His
greatest accomplishment was to have conceived and
clearly expressed an idea which the modern evolutionist
connotes when he speaks of homologous parts—an
idea which found a famous modern expositor in Goethe,
as we shall see when we come to deal with eighteenth-
century science. Empedocles expresses the idea in
these words: "Hair, and leaves, and thick feathers of
birds, are the same thing in origin, and reptile scales
too on strong limbs. But on hedgehogs sharp-pointed
hair bristles on their backs.''
[58]
That the idea of transmutation of parts, as well as of mere
homology, was in mind is evidenced by a very remarkable sentence in
which Aristotle asserts, "Empedocles says that fingernails
rise from sinew from hardening.'' Nor is this
quite all, for surely we find the germ of the Lamarckian
conception of evolution through the transmission of
acquired characters in the assertion that "many
characteristics appear in animals because it happened to
be thus in their birth, as that they have such a spine
because they happen to be descended from one that
bent itself backward.''
[59] Aristotle,
in quoting this remark, asserts, with the dogmatism which characterizes
the philosophical commentators of every age,
that "Empedocles is wrong,'' in making this assertion;
but Lamarck, who lived twenty-three hundred years
after Empedocles, is famous in the history of the doctrine
of evolution for elaborating this very idea.
It is fair to add, however, that the dreamings of
Empedocles regarding the origin of living organisms
led him to some conceptions that were much less
luminous. On occasion, Empedocles the poet got the
better of Empedocles the scientist, and we are presented
with a conception of creation as grotesque as
that which delighted the readers of Paradise Lost at a
later day. Empedocles assures us that "many heads
grow up without necks, and arms were wandering
about, necks bereft of shoulders, and eyes roamed
about alone with no foreheads.''
[60] This
chaotic condition, so the poet dreamed, led to the union of many
incongruous parts, producing "creatures with double
faces, offspring of oxen with human faces, and children
of men with oxen heads.'' But out of this chaos
came, finally, we are led to infer, a harmonious
aggregation of parts, producing ultimately the perfected
organisms that we see. Unfortunately the preserved
portions of the writings of Empedocles do not enlighten
us as to the precise way in which final evolution was
supposed to be effected; although the idea of endless
experimentation until natural selection resulted in
survival of the fittest seems not far afield from certain
of the poetical assertions. Thus: "As divinity was
mingled yet more with divinity, these things (the various
members) kept coming together in whatever way
each might chance.'' Again: "At one time all the
limbs which form the body united into one by love
grew vigorously in the prime of life; but yet at another
time, separated by evil Strife, they wander each in
different directions along the breakers of the sea of life.
Just so is it with plants, and with fishes dwelling in
watery halls, and beasts whose lair is in the mountains,
and birds borne on wings.''
[61]
All this is poetry rather than science, yet such
imaginings could come only to one who was groping towards
what we moderns should term an evolutionary conception
of the origins of organic life; and however grotesque
some of these expressions may appear, it must be
admitted that the morphological ideas of Empedocles,
as above quoted, give the Sicilian philosopher a secure
place among the anticipators of the modern evolutionist.