on 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."(8)

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."(13) And Empedocles' own words, as preserved by Stobaeus, 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.