taught that Nature
is nothing else save that which is born, and death no other thing but
that which dies? But as the poets very often, forming as it were an
image, say thus in figurative language,

Strife, tumult, noise, placed by some angry god,
Mischief, and malice there had their abode;
("Iliad," xvii. 525.)

so do some authors attribute generation and corruption to things that
are contracted together and dissolved. But so far has he been from
stirring and taking away that which is, or contradicting that which
evidently appears, that he casts not so much as one single word out of
the accustomed use; but taking away all figurative fraud that might
hurt or endamage things, he again restored the ordinary and useful
signification to words in these verses:--

When from mixed elements we sometimes see
A man produced, sometimes a beast, a tree,
Or bird, this birth and geniture we name;
But death, when this so well compacted frame
And juncture is dissolved.

And yet I myself say that Colotes, though he alleged these verses, did
not understand that Empedocles took not away men, beasts, trees, or
birds, which he affirmed to be composed of the elements mixed together;
and that, by teaching how much they are deceived who call this
composition Nature and life, and this dissolution unhappy destruction
and miserable death, he did not abrogate the using of the customary
expressions in this respect.

And it seems to me, indeed, that Empedocles did not aim in this place at
the disturbing the common manner of expression, but that he really, as
it has been said, had a controversy about generation from things that
have no being, which some call Nature. Which he manifestly shows by
these verses:--

Fools, and of little thought, we well may deem
Those, who so silly are as to esteem
That what ne'er was may now engendered be,
And that what is may perish utterly.

For these are the words of one who cries loud enough to those which have
ears, that he takes not away generation, but procreation from nothing;
nor corruption, but total destruction that is, reduction to nothing.
For to him who would not so savagely and foolishly but more gently
calumniate, the following verses might give a colorable occasion of
charging Empedocles with the contrary, when he says:--

No prudent man can e'er into his mind
Admit that, whilst men living here on earth
(Which only l