777 



EMMIUS UBBO. 



EMPEDOCLES. 



778 



circulated. His health was generally excellent till near the latter part 

 of his life, when he became a great sufferer from the stone. 



Emerson was in many respects a very eccentric person, fancifully 

 coarse in his dress, and uncourteous in his conversation. Jle waa 

 nevertheless, when in his happier moods, a delightful companion, and 

 his discourse full of instruction, deep thought, and startling originality 

 of opinion. 



All his books were published in London ; and it was his invariable 

 practice to walk to town and shut himself up in some obscure lodging 

 to devote himself sedulously to the correction of the successive sheets 

 of his works with a care never exceeded even by Hamilton or Cruden ; 

 and certainly, of all the mathematical works that have ever been 

 published, those of Emerson are the freest from errata. 



Emerson was married, but had no children. He amused himself 

 with fishing, a diversion to which he was much attached, and would 

 frequently stand up to his middle in the water for hours together 

 when he found it gave him a better position for the use of his fly or 

 his angle. He was an excellent practical mechanic, and of most of 

 the machines described in his work on mechanics he had made very 

 good models. The spinning-wheel delineated in that work was the 

 one on which his wife employed her leisure hours. He had also a 

 very profound knowledge of the musical scales, both ancient and 

 modern, although he was but a poor performer; still he was dexterous 

 in the repair of musical instruments, and was generally employed to 

 time the harpsichords and clean the clocks throughout the district in 

 which he resided. 



The boM and frank manner in which Emerson spoke on all subjects 

 has led some persons to affirm that he was a sceptic in religion. Of 

 this however there is cot the slightest evidence ; but it appears to 

 have arisen from the insinuations of his scientific opponents, who thus 

 attempted to crush his reputation with the world, and thereby weaken 

 his authority in matters connected with science a course too often 

 adopted in our own day by those who contend for victory rather than 

 truth. Emerson was through a long life universally accounted a man 

 of integrity; but his honesty often led to dogmatism, and his indig- 

 nation at error to an expression of feeling that gave his controversial 

 writings an air of ungracious severity. 



A considerable number of Emerson's processes are marked with 

 peculiar elegance and considerable powers of invention ; still there is 

 apparent in all of them a want of that power of generalisation which 

 distinguishes the highest order of minds. His 'Method of Increments' 

 is the most original of his works ; and his ' Doctrine of Fluxions ' is 

 perhaps the most elegant. His 'Mechanics' is the work by which he 

 is most generally known, a circumstance probably owing to its con- 

 taining descriptions of so many of the more usual and useful 

 machines; but it is a work singularly crude and ill-digested, and 

 not less singularly incomplete in even the enunciation of the most 

 important principles of mechanical science. 



The following is a list of his works, all in 8vo, except his ' Mechanics 

 and Increments' in 4to, and his 'Navigation' in 12mo: 1, 'Doctrine 

 of Fluxions;' 2, 'Projection of the Sphere, Orthographic, Stereographic, 

 and Gnomonic ; ' 3, ' The Elements of Trigonometry ; ' 4, ' Principles 

 of Mechanics;' 5, 'A Treatise on Navigation;' 6, 'A Treatise on 

 Arithmetic;' 7, 'A Treatise on Geometry; 8, 'A Treatise on Algebra;' 

 9, 'The Method of Increments;' 10, 'Arithmetic of Infinities, and 

 the Conic Sections, with other curve lines ;' 11, 'Elements of Optics 

 and Perspective ; ' 12, ' Astronomy ;' 13, ' Mechanics, with Centripetal 

 and Centrifugal Forces;' 14, ' Mathematical Principles of Geography, 

 Navigation, and Dialling ;' 15, 'Commentary on the Principia, with a 

 Defence of Newton;' 16, 'Miscellanies.' 



EMMIUS UBBO, was born at Gretha, in East Friesland, in 1547. 

 His father was a clergyman of the Lutheran communion. Emmius 

 studied at Bremen, Rostock, and lastly at Geneva, where he became 

 intimate with Beza. He afterwards returned to bis native country, 

 and in 1589 was made rector of the school of Norden, in East Fries- 

 land. In 1594 he was appointed to the chair of history and the Greek 

 language in the college of Groningen, and when the university of 

 Groningen was instituted in 1614, Emmius was made rector of the 

 lame. He was deeply imbued with classical learning, and he excelled 

 in the knowledge of history, ancient and modern. Among his his- 

 torical works the most important is the 'Vetus Grtccia illustrata,' 

 3 vols. Leyden, 1626. The first volume consists of a description 

 of ancient Greece, including the islands ; the second contains a history 

 of that country; and the third, which is the most elaborate and 

 interesting, gives an account of the political institutions and social 

 manners of the various Greek states, namely, of Athens, Sparta, Creta, 

 Argos, Thebes, Corinth, Syracuse, Corcyra, Samos, Chios, Rhodes, 

 Achaia, .lEtolia, Massilia in Gaul, Locri in Italy, and Lycia in Asia. 

 The author has also introduced a brief sketch of the Carthaginian 

 republic. The appendix contains an account of the decline and fall of 

 three of the above states Athens, Carthage, and Sparta. Emmius 

 gives a long list of ancient authors from whom he derived his informa- 

 tion. The work is altogether useful, and was still more so at the time 

 of its appearance, when good works on classical learning were more 

 scarce than they are at present. The other works of Emmius are 

 2, ' Opus Chronologicum,' or a General Chronology, folio, 1619. 3, 

 ' Hcrum Frisicarum Historia, a gentis origine usque ad ann. 1565,' 

 Leyden, 1632: it is a good history of Friesland, the author's native 



BIOO. DIV. VOL. O. 



country, to which is added ' De Frisiorum Republica Commentariua," 

 published before separately at Embden in 1619. 4, ' De Agro Frisias 

 inter Amasutn et Lavicum flumina.' 5, ' Historia nostri Temporis,' 

 Groningen, 1732. Emmius Ubbo died in 1625, in his seventy-eighth 

 year. At the time of his death he was busy writing a history of Philip 

 of Macedonia, the father of Alexander the Great, which he intended as 

 a warning to the republic of the United Provinces against the designs 

 and intrigues of their enemies. He had written as far as the fifteenth 

 year of Philip's reign. Emmius was acquainted with, and appreciated 

 by, most of the learned men of his time, such as De Thou, Gruter, 

 Gomar the theologian, Pezelius, and others. He was especially a 

 favourite with William Louis, of Nassau, the governor of Friesland 

 and Groningen. 



EMPE'DOCLES, a native of Agrigentum in Sicily, who nourished 

 about B.C. 450 : he was distinguished not only as a philosopher, but 

 also for his knowledge of natural history and medicine, and as a poet 

 and statesman. It is generally believed that he perished in the crater 

 of Mount JEina. The story that .he threw himself into it in order 

 that by disappearing suddenly and without a trace, he might establish 

 his claim to divinity, and the charge of arrogance founded upon that 

 pretension, seems to have rested on a misconception of his doctrino 

 that the human soul (and consequently his own) is divine and immortal. 



His masters in philosophy are variously given. By some, like the 

 Eleatao generally, he is called a Pythagorean, in consequence of a 

 resemblance of doctrine in a few unessential points. But the prin- 

 ciples of liis theory evidently show that he belongs to the Eleatic 

 school, though the statement which makes him a disciple of Parme- 

 nides rests apparently upon no other foundation than a comparison of 

 their systems ; as, in like manner, the common employment of the 

 mechanical physiology has led to an opinion that he waa a hearer of 

 his contemporary Auaxagoras. 



He taught that originally All was one : God, eternal and at rest : 

 a sphere and a mixture (a<pmpos, pi-fiia) without a vacuum in 

 which the elements of things were held together in uudistinguishable 

 confusion by love (<t>t\la) the primal force which unites like to 

 unlike. In a portion of this whole however, or, as he expresses it, in 

 the members of the Deity, strife (oj) the force which binds like 

 to like prevailed and gave to the elements a tendency to separate 

 themselves, whereby they first became perceptible as such, although 

 the separation was not so complete, but that each contained portions 

 of the others. Hence arose the multiplicity of things : by the vivify- 

 ing counteraction of love organic life was produced, not however so 

 perfect and so full of design as it now appears ; but at first single 

 limbs, then irregular combinations, till ultimately they received their 

 present adjustments and perfection. But as the forces of love and 

 hate are constantly acting upon each other for production or destruc- 

 tion, the present condition of things cannot persist for ever, and the 

 world which, properly, is not the All, but only the ordered part of it, 

 will again be reduced to a chaotic unity, out of which a new system 

 will be formed, and so on for ever. 



There is no real destruction of anything, only a change of combina- 

 tions. It must be remarked that the primal forces, love and hate, 

 must not be supposed to be extrinsically impressed upon matter ; on 

 the contrary, while strife is inherent in the elements separately, love 

 is in the mass of things nay, more, is one with it God. Of the 

 elements (which he seems to have been the first to exhibit as four 

 distinct species of matter), fire, as the rarest and most powerful, he 

 held to be the chief, and consequently the soul of all sentient and 

 intellectual beings which issue from the central fire, or soul of tUo 

 world. The soul migrates through animal and vegetable bodies in 

 atonement for some guilt committed in its unembodied state when it 

 is a dxmon ; of which he supposed that an infinite number existed. 

 The seat of the daemon when in a human body is the blood. 



Closely connected with his view of the objects of knowledge was his 

 theory of human knowledge. In the impure separation of tho 

 elements it is only the predominant one that the senses can apprehend, 

 and consequently, although man can know all the elements of the 

 whole singly, he is unable to see them in their perfect unity wherein 

 consists their truth. Empedocles therefore rejects tho testimony of 

 the senses, and maintains that pure intellect alone can arrive at a 

 knowledge of the truth. This is the attribute of the Deity, for man 

 cannot overlook the work of love in all its extent ; and the true unity 

 is only open to itself. Hence he was led to distinguish between tho 

 world, as presented to our senses (/tciir/ioj aiV07)T<is), and its type the 

 intellectual world (/crftr/xos voT/rtJs). 



His explanation of the cognitive faculty, which rested upon the 

 assumption that " like can only be known by like," is drawn naturally 

 enough from his physical view. Man is capable of knowing outward 

 things, since he is, like them, composed of the four elements, and of 

 the two forces love and hate ; and it is especially by the presence of 

 lova within him that he is able to arrive at an intellectual knowledge 

 of the whole, however imperfect and inferior to the divine. 



(The Fragments of Empedocles were published with a commentary 

 by Fr. W. Sturz, Leipzig, 1805, 8vo; see also Empedoclis and Parme- 

 nidis Fragmenta, ex Cod. Taur. Jiibl. reatituta, et illustrata, ab A. 

 Peyron, Lips. 1810, 8vo; Karsten, Empedoclis Ayrigentini Carmin. 

 Rdiq., in vol. ii. of Philosophorum Grteeornm veterum rcliqnia;., Amst. , 

 1838 ; and Zeller, die Philosophic dcr Qrioek, Tubingen, 1844. 



Sis 



