12 PIONEERS OF EVOLUTION PART 



more applied to details ; theories of the beginnings 

 of life being followed by theories of the origin of its 

 various forms. This is a. feature of the philosophy 

 of Empedocles, who flourished in the fifth century 

 B.C. The advance of Persia westward had led to 

 migrations of Greeks to the south of Italy and Sicily, 

 and it was at Agrigentum, in that island, that Empe- 

 docles was born about 490. He has an honoured 

 place among the earliest who supplanted guesses 

 about the world by enquiry into the world itself. 

 Many legends are told of his magic arts, one of 

 which, it will be remembered, Matthew Arnold 

 makes an occasion of some fine reflections in his 

 poem Empedocles on Etna. The philosopher was 

 said to have brought back to life a woman who, 

 apparently, had been dead for thirty days. As he 

 ascends the mountain, Pausanias of Gela, with an 

 address to whom the poem of Empedocles opens, 

 would fain have his curiosity slaked concerning this 

 and other marvels reported of him : 



Ask not the latest news of the last miracle, 



Ask not what days and nights 



In trance Pantheia lay, 



But ask how thou such sights 



May'st see without dismay ; 



Ask what most helps when known, thou son of Anchitus. 



His speculations about things, like those of Par- 

 menides before him and of Lucretius after him, are 

 set down in verse. From the remains of his Poem 

 on Nature we learn that he conceived ' the four roots 

 of all things ' to be FIRE, Am, EARTH, and WATER. 

 They are ' fools, lacking far-reaching thoughts, who 

 deem that what before was not, comes into being, or 



