A History of Greek Philosophy / THE ATOMISTS / EMPEDOCLES

Page 14

Thus to his mighty conception the life of all creation, and not of man only, was a great expiation, an eternal round of punishment for sin; and in the unending flux of life each creature rose or fell in the scale of existence according to the deeds of good or ill done in each successive life; rising sometimes to the state of men, or among men to the high functions of physicians and prophets and kings, or among beasts to the dignity of the lion, or among trees to the beauty of the laurel; or, on the contrary, sinking through sin to lowest forms of bestial or vegetable life. Till at the last they who through obedience and right-doing have expiated their wrong, are endowed by the blessed gods with endless honour, to dwell for ever with them and share their banquets, untouched any more with human care and sorrow and pain.

The slaying of any living creature, therefore, Empedocles, like Pythagoras, abhorred, for all were kin. All foul acts were forms of worse than suicide; life should be a long act of worship, of expiation, of purification. And in the dim past he pictured a vision of a golden age, in which men worshipped not many gods, but Love only, and not with sacrifices of blood, but with pious images, and cunningly odorous incense, and offerings of fragrant myrrh. With abstinence also, and above all with that noblest abstinence, the abstinence from vice and wrong.

Previous / First 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=14