that things arise and pass away, there is only one way of
explaining this. We must suppose that objects, as wholes
begin and cease to be, but that the material particles of
which they are composed are uncreated and indestructible.
This thought now forms the first principle of Empedocles,
and of his successors, Anaxagoras, and the Atomists.
Now the Ionic philosophers had taught that all things are
composed of some one ultimate matter. Thales believed it
to be water, Anaximenes air. This necessarily involved that
the ultimate kind of matter must be capable of transforma-
tion into other kinds of matter. If it is water, then water
must be capable of turning into brass, wood, iron, air, or
whatever other kind of matter exists. And the same thing
applies to the air of Anaximenes. Parmenides, however,
had taught that whatever is, remains always the same, no
change or transformation being possible. Empedocles here
too follows Parmenides, and interprets his doctrine in his
own way. One kind of matter, he thinks, can never change
into another kind of matter; fire never becomes {83} water,
nor does earth ever become air. This leads Empedocles at
once to a doctrine of elements. The word “elements,” in-
deed, is of later invention, and Empedocles speaks of the
elements as “the roots of all.” There are four elements,
earth, air, fire, and water. Empedocles was therefore the
originator of the familiar classification of the four elements.
All other kinds of matter are to be explained as mixtures, in
various proportions, of these four. Thus all origination and
decease, as well as the differential qualities of certain kinds
of matter, are now explained by the mixing and unmixing
of the four elements. All becoming is simply composition
and decomposition.But the coming together and separation of the elements in-
volves the movement of particles, and to explain this there
must exist some moving force. The Ionic philosophers had
assumed that matter has the power or force required for
movement immanent in itself. The air of Anaximenes, of
its own inherent power, transforms itself into other kinds
of matter. This doctrine Empedocles rejects. Matter is
for him absolutely dead and lifeless, without any principle
of motion in itself. There is, therefore, only one remain-
ing possibility. Forces acting upon matter from the outside
must be assumed. And as the two essential processes of the
world, mixing and unmixing, are opposite in character, so
there must be two opposite forces. These he calls by the
names Love and Hate, or Harmony and Discord. Though
these terms may have an idealistic sound, Empedocles con-
ceives them as entirely physical and material forces. But he
identifies the attractions and repulsions of human beings,
which we call love and hate, with the universally operating
forces of the material world. Human love and {84} hate
are but the manifestations in us of the mechanical forces of
attraction and repulsion at work in the world at large.Empedocles taught the doctrine of periodic world-cycles.
The world-process is, therefore, properly speaking, circu-
lar, and has neither beginning nor end. But in describing
this process one must begin somewhere. We will begin,
then, with the sphairos (sphere). In the primeval sphere
the four elements are completely mixed, and interpenetrate
each other completely. Water is not separated off from air,
nor air from earth. All are chaotically mixed together. In