A HISTORY OF SCIENCE 



to ascribe a merely natural death to so inspired a 

 prophet. 



Empedocles appears to have been at once an observer 

 and a dreamer. He is credited with noting that the 

 pressure of air will sustain the weight of water in an 

 inverted tube; with divining, without the possibility 

 of proof, that light has actual motion in space; and 

 with asserting that centrifugal motion must keep the 

 heavens from falling. He is credited with a great 

 sanitary feat in the draining of a marsh, and his knowl- 

 edge of medicine was held to be supernatural. Fort- 

 unately, some fragments of the writings of Emped- 

 ocles have come down to us, enabling us to judge at 

 first hand as to part of his doctrines ; while still more is 

 known through the references made to him by Plato, 

 Aristotle, and other commentators. Empedocles was 

 a poet whose verses stood the test of criticism. 

 In this regard he is in a like position with Par- 

 menides; but in neither case are the preserved frag- 

 ments sufficient to enable us fully to estimate their 

 author's scientific attainments. Philosophical writ- 

 ings are obscure enough at the best, and they perforce 

 become doubly so when expressed in verse. Yet there 

 are certain passages of Empedocles that are unequiv- 

 ocal and full of interest. Perhaps the most important 

 conception which the works of Empedocles reveal to 

 us is the denial of anthropomorphism as applied to 

 deity. We have seen how early the anthropomorphic 

 conception was developed and how closely it was all 

 along clung to ; to shake the mind free from it then was 

 a remarkable feat, in accomplishing which Empedocles 

 took a long step* in the direction of rationalism. His 



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