38 AMONG THE GREEKS. 



animals. But this origin he believed to be a very 

 gradual process, for even now the living world pre- 

 sents a series of incomplete products. All organ- 

 isms arose through the fortuitous play of the two 

 great forces of Nature upon the four elements. 

 Thus animals first appeared, not as complete indi- 

 viduals, but as parts of individuals, heads without 

 necks, arms without shoulders, eyes without their 

 sockets. As a result of the triumph of love over 

 hate, these parts began to seek each other and 

 unite, but purely fortuitously. Thus out of this 

 confused play of bodies, all kinds of accidental and 

 extraordinary beings arose, animals with the heads 

 of men, and men with the heads of animals, even 

 with double chests and heads like those of the 

 guests in the Feast of Aristophanes. But these 

 unnatural products soon became extinct, because 

 they were not capable of propagation. Here it 

 would appear that Empedocles was mainly endeav- 

 ouring to give a naturalistic theory for the origin 

 of the Centaurs, Chimaeras, and other creations of 

 Greek mythology. Thus, at least, Lucretius inter- 

 preted Empedocles many centuries later, putting 

 these conjectures into verse (Book V. 860): 



" Hence, doubtless, Earth prodigious forms at first 

 Gendered, of face and members most grotesque : 

 Monsters half-man, half-woman, not from each 

 Distant, yet neither total ; shapes unsound, 

 Footless and handless, void of mouth or eye, 

 Or from misjunction, maimed, of limb with limb : 



