A History of Greek Philosophy / THE ATOMISTS / EMPEDOCLES

Page 13

 The process of sensation he conceived to be conditioned by an actual emission from the bodies perceived of elements or images of themselves which found access to our apprehension through channels congruous to their nature. But ordering, criticising, organising these various apprehensions was the Mind or Nous, which he conceived to be of divine nature, to be indeed an expression or emanation of the Divine. And here has been preserved a strangely interesting passage, in which he incorporates and develops in characteristic fashion the doctrine of transmigration of souls: “There is a decree of Necessity, a law given of old from the gods, eternal, sealed with mighty oaths, that when any heavenly creature (daemon) of those that are endowed with length of days, shall in waywardness of heart defile his hands with sin of deed or speech, he shall wander for thrice ten thousand seasons far from the dwellings of the blest, taking upon him in length of time all manner of mortal forms, traversing in turn the many toilsome paths of existence. Him the aetherial wrath hurries onward to the deep, and the deep spews him forth on to the threshold of earth, and unworn earth casts him up to the fires of the sun, and again the aether hurls him into the eddies. One receives him, and then another, but detested is he of them all. Of such am I also one, an exile and a wanderer from God, a slave to strife and its madness.”

Previous / First / Next Page of this chapter

Cf. Empedocles Anthology and Resources

Next Chapter : LEUCIPPUS AND DEMOCRITUS / Previous Chapter : ANAXAGORAS

A History of Greek Philosophy : Table of Contents

Reference address : https://ellopos.net/elpenor/greek-texts/ancient-Greece/history-of-philosophy/empedocles.asp?pg=13