42 SCIENCE AND THE HUMAN MIND 



bodies of plants and animals, and back again to earth 

 and water. They began to realize the conception 

 of the indestructibility of matter, and speculated on 

 the possibility of a single " element," a common 

 basis of all substances. But the rival hypothesis of 

 the Sicilian philosopher Empedocles (450 B.C.), the 

 wonder-worker, appealed more to contemporary 

 thought. Empedocles held that the primary 

 elements were earth, water, air and fire a solid, 

 a liquid, a gas, and a type of matter still rarer 

 than the gaseous. These four elements were 

 combined throughout the Universe in different pro- 

 portions under the influence of two contrasted divine 

 powers, one attractive and one repulsive, which the 

 ordinary eye sees working among men as love and 

 hatred, a return to the conceptions of Pythagoras. 

 Empedocles illustrates in a most forcible manner the 

 essential unity of the mystic and the man of science, 

 on which we have already dwelt. He was able to 

 distinguish between the body substances of his four 

 corporeal " elements," and the soul substance of his 

 two divine forces. He separated energy from matter, 

 and, in so doing, took a real step in advance. This 

 doctrine of four elements held sway over the minds of 

 men till modern chemistry was brought up against the 

 eighty or more different types of irresolvable matter, 

 and it is still found in literature now that modern 

 physics is opening once more a glimpse into yet 

 more fundamental depths and discovering corpuscles, 

 common to all chemical elements a return by the 

 path of modern experimental methods to the lucky 

 guess of the Ionian philosophers. 



Empedocles' theory of a divine power or life passing 



