Page:History of the Literature of Ancient Greece (Müller) 2ed.djvu/277

255 LITERATURE OF ANCIENT GREECE. 255 poets, and other benefactors of mankind. The great doctrine, that Love is the power which formed the world, was probably announced to him by the Muse whom he invoked, as the secret by the contemplation of which he was to emancipate himself from all the baneful effects of discord.* The physical philosophy of Empedocles has much in common with that of the Eleatics ; and hence Zeno is said to have commented on his poem, that is, probably, he reduced it to the strict principles of the Eleatic school. It has also much in common with the philosophy of Anaxagoras; which would itself scarcely have arisen, if the Elealic doctrine of eternal existence had not been already opposed to that of Ileraclitns concerning' the flux of things. Empedocles also denied the possibility of creation and destruction, and saw in the processes so called nothing more than combination and separation of parts; like the Eleatics, he held the doctrine of an eternal and imperishable existence. But. he considered this existence as having different natures ; inasmuch as he supposed that there are four elements of things. To these he gave mythological names, calling fire the all-penetrating Zeus, air, the life-giving Here; earth (as being the gloomy abode of exiled spirits), Aidoneus ; and water, by a name of his own, Nestis. These four elements he supposed to be governed by two principles, one posi- tive and one negative, that is to say, connecting, creating love, and dissolving, destroying discord. By the working of discord the world was disturbed from its original condition, when all things were at rest in the form of a globe, " the divine sphserus ;" and a series of changes began, from which the existing world gradually arose. Empedocles described and explained, with much ingenuity, the beautiful structure of the universe, and treated of the nature of the earth's surface and its productions. In these inquiries he appears to have anticipated some of the discoveries of modern science. Thus, for example, his doctrine that mountains and rocks had been raised by a subterranean href is an anticipation of the theory of elevation established by recent geolo- gists ; and his descriptions of the rude and grotesque forms of the earliest animals seem almost to show that he was acquainted with the fossil remains of extinct races. § 14. We now turn to that class of ancient philosophers which in t>iv au t'o'M oipxiv, {/.rio o/u,ftcnrii 7,90 TlQnvru;, &C. In like manner the Muse says to the poet: ffu ovv itii ut iAiatrtttiS) Vivflcti' oh rrXuav yi fSgoriiyi (AWlf o^ugtv. v. 331. from Sext. Empir. adv. math. vii. 122. sq. The invocation of the Muse is in Sext. Empir. adv. Math. vii. 121. v. 341. sq. f Plutarch de primo frig. c. 19. (p. 953.) I 6ee /Elian Hist. An. xvi. 29. ap. Sturz. v 14 sq.
 * This is proved by the passage in Simplic. ad Phys. f. 34. v. 52. sq. Sturz.."