tence of an animal denied,
since they posit principles void, impassible, godless, and soulless, and
such as cannot allow or receive any mixture or commingling whatever.

How then is it, that they admit and allow Nature, soul, and living
creature? Even in the same manner as they do an oath, prayer, and
sacrifice, and the adoration of the gods. Thus they adore by word and
mouth, only naming and feigning that which by their principles they
totally take away and abolish. If now they call that which is born
Nature, and that which is engendered generation,--as those who are
accustomed to call wood wood-work and the voices that accord and sound
together symphony,--whence came it into his mind to object these words
against Empedocles? "Why," says he, "do we tire ourselves in taking such
care of ourselves, in desiring and longing after certain things, and
shunning and avoiding others? For we neither are ourselves, nor do we
live by making use of others." But be of good cheer, my dear little
Colotes, may one perhaps say to him: there is none who hinders you
from taking care of yourself by teaching that the nature of Colotes
is nothing else but Colotes himself, or who forbids you to make use of
things (now things with you are pleasures) by showing that there is no
nature of tarts and marchpanes, of sweet odors, or of venereal delights,
but that there are tarts, marchpanes, perfumes, and women. For neither
does the grammarian who says that the "strength of Hercules" is Hercules
himself deny the being of Hercules; nor do those who say that symphonies
and roofings are but absolute derivations affirm that there are neither
sounds nor timbers; since also there are some who, taking away the soul
and intelligence, do not yet seem to take away either living or being
intelligent.

And when Epicurus says that the nature of things is to be found in
bodies and their place, do we so comprehend him as if he meant that
Nature were something else than the things which are, or as if
he insinuated that it is merely the things which are, and nothing
else?--as, to wit, he is wont to call voidness itself the nature of
voidness, and the universe, by Jupiter, the nature of the universe. And
if any one should thus question him; What sayst thou, Epicurus, that
this is voidness, and that the nature of voidness? No, by Jupiter, would
he answer; but this transference of names is in use by law and custom.
I grant it is. Now what has Empedocles done else, but