ould
dream that what was not before can be, or that aught which is can
utterly perish and die." Thus again Empedocles shows himself an
Eclectic; in denying that aught can come into being, he holds with the
Eleatics (see above, p. 47); in identifying all seeming creation, and
ceasing to be with certain mixtures and separations of matter eternally
existing, he links himself rather to the doctrine of Anaxagoras (see
above, p. 53).

[132]

These four elements constitute the total _corpus_ of the universe,
eternal, as a whole unmoved and immovable, perfect like a sphere. But
within this sphere-like self-centred All there are eternally proceeding
separations and new unions of the elements of things; and every one of
these is at once a birth {63} and an infinity of dyings, a dying and an
infinity of births. Towards this perpetual life in death, and death in
life, two forces work inherent in the universe. One of these he names
Love, Friendship, Harmony, Aphrodite goddess of Love, Passion, Joy; the
other he calls Hate, Discord, Ares god of War, Envy, Strife. Neither
of the one nor of the other may man have apprehension by the senses;
they are spiritually discerned; yet of the first men have some
adumbration in the creative force within their own members, which they
name by the names of Love and Nuptial Joy.

Somewhat prosaically summing up the teaching of Empedocles, Aristotle
says that he thus posited _six_ first principles in nature--four
material, two motive or efficient. And he goes on to remark that in
the working out of his theory of nature Empedocles, though using his
originative principles more consistently than Anaxagoras used his
principle of _Nous_ or Thought, not infrequently, nevertheless, resorts
to some natural force in the elements themselves, or even to chance or
necessity. "Nor," he continues, "has he clearly marked off the
functions of his two efficient forces, nay, he has so confounded them
that at times it is Discord that through separation leads to new
unions, and Love that through union causes diremption of that which was
before." At times, too, Empedocles seems to have had a vision of these
two forces, not as the counteracting yet {64} co-operative
_pulsations_, so to speak, of the universal life, but as rival forces
having had in time their periods of alternate supremacy and defeat.
While all things were in union under the influence of Love, then was
there neither Earth nor Water nor Air nor