king to some ignorant and unlettered
king, again attacks Empedocles for expressing the same thought:--

I've one thing more to say. 'Mongst mortals there
No Nature is; nor that grim thing men fear
So much, called death. There only happens first
A mixture, and mixt things asunder burst
Again, when them disunion does befall.
And this is that which men do Nature call.

For my part, I do not see how this is repugnant and contrary to life or
living, especially amongst those who hold that there is no generation
of that which is not, nor corruption of that which is, but that the
assembling and union of the things which are is called generation, and
their dissolution and disunion named corruption and death. For that he
took Nature for generation, and that this is his meaning, he has himself
declared, when he opposed Nature to death. And if they neither live nor
can live who place generation in union and death in disunion, what else
do these Epicureans? Yet Empedocles, gluing, (as it were) and conjoining
the elements together by heats, softnesses, and humidifies, gives them
in some sort a mixtion and unitive composition; but these men who hunt
and drive together the atoms, which they affirm to be immutable and
impassible, compose nothing proceeding from them, but indeed make many
and continual percussions of them.

For the interlacement, hindering the dissolution, more and more augments
the collision and concussion; so that there is neither mixtion nor
adhesion and conglutination, but only a discord and combat, which
according to them is called generation. And if the atoms do now recoil
for a moment by reason of the shock they have given, and then return
again after the blow is past, they are above double the time absent from
one another, without either touching or approaching, so as nothing can
be made of them, not even so much as a body without a soul. But as for
sense, soul, understanding, and prudence, there is not any man who can
in the least conceive or imagine how it is possible they should be made
in a voidness, and atoms which neither when separate and apart have
any quality, nor any passion or alteration when they are assembled and
joined together, especially seeing this their meeting together is not
an incorporation or congress, making a mixture or coalition, but rather
percussions and repercussions. So that, according to the doctrine of
these people, life is taken away, and the exis