Page:Early Greek philosophy by John Burnet, 3rd edition, 1920.djvu/255

Rh fully what the theory was. The text of Aetios is very corrupt here; but it may, perhaps, be rendered as follows:

Aristotle finds fault with Empedokles for explaining the double growth of plants, upwards and downwards, by the opposite natural motions of the earth and fire contained in them. For "natural motions" we must, of course, substitute the attraction of like for like (§ 109). Theophrastos says much the same thing. The growth of plants, then, is to be regarded as an incident in the separation of the elements by Strife. Some of the fire still beneath the earth (fr. 52) meeting in its upward course with earth, still moist with water and "running" down so as to "reach its own kind," unites with it, under the influence of the Love still left in the world, to form a temporary combination, which we call a tree or a plant.

At the beginning of the pseudo-Aristotelian Treatise on Plants, we are told that Empedokles attributed desire, sensation, and the capacity for pleasure and pain to plants, and he rightly saw that the two sexes are combined in them. 16