Add, too, whoever make the primal stuff Twofold, by joining air to fire, and earth To water; add who deem that things can grow Out of the four- fire, earth, and breath, and rain;As first Empedocles of Acragas, Whom that three-cornered isle of all the lands Bore on her coasts, around which flows and flows In mighty bend and bay the Ionic seas, Splashing the brine from off their gray-green waves.
Here, billowing onward through the narrow straits, Swift ocean cuts her boundaries from the shores Of the Italic mainland. Here the waste Charybdis; and here Aetna rumbles threats To gather anew such furies of its flames As with its force anew to vomit fires, Belched from its throat, and skyward bear anew Its lightnings' flash. And though for much she seem The mighty and the wondrous isle to men, Most rich in all good things, and fortified With generous strength of heroes, she hath ne'er Possessed within her aught of more renown, Nor aught more holy, wonderful, and dear Than this true man. Nay, ever so far and pure The lofty music of his breast divine Lifts up its voice and tells of glories found, That scarce he seems of human stock create.
Yet he and those forementioned (known to be So far beneath him, less than he in all), Though, as discoverers of much goodly truth, They gave, as 'twere from out of the heart's own shrine, Responses holier and soundlier based Than ever the Pythia pronounced for men From out the triped and the Delphian laurel, Have still in matter of first-elements Made ruin of themselves, and, great men, great Indeed and heavy there for them the fall:
First, because, banishing the void from things, They yet assign them motion, and allow Things soft and loosely textured to exist, As air, dew, fire, earth, animals, and grains, Without admixture of void amid their frame.
Next, because, thinking there can be no end In cutting bodies down to less and less Nor pause established to their breaking up, They hold there is no minimum in things;Albeit we see the boundary point of aught Is that which to our senses seems its least, Whereby thou mayst conjecture, that, because The things thou canst not mark have boundary points, They surely have their minimums. Then, too, Since these philosophers ascribe to things Soft primal germs, which we behold to be Of birth and body mortal, thus, throughout, The sum of things must be returned to naught, And, born from naught, abundance thrive anew-Thou seest how far each doctrine stands from truth.
And, next, these bodies are among themselves In many ways poisons and foes to each, Wherefore their congress will destroy them quite Or drive asunder as we see in storms Rains, winds, and lightnings all asunder fly.
Thus too, if all things are create of four, And all again dissolved into the four, How can the four be called the primal germs Of things, more than all things themselves be thought, By retroversion, primal germs of them?
For ever alternately are both begot, With interchange of nature and aspect From immemorial time. But if percase Thou think'st the frame of fire and earth, the air, The dew of water can in such wise meet As not by mingling to resign their nature, From them for thee no world can be create-No thing of breath, no stock or stalk of tree:
In the wild congress of this varied heap Each thing its proper nature will display, And air will palpably be seen mixed up With earth together, unquenched heat with water.
But primal germs in bringing things to birth Must have a latent, unseen quality, Lest some outstanding alien element Confuse and minish in the thing create Its proper being.
But these men begin From heaven, and from its fires; and first they feign That fire will turn into the winds of air, Next, that from air the rain begotten is, And earth created out of rain, and then That all, reversely, are returned from earth-The moisture first, then air thereafter heat-And that these same ne'er cease in interchange, To go their ways from heaven to earth, from earth Unto the stars of the aethereal world-Which in no wise at all the germs can do.
Since an immutable somewhat still must be, Lest all things utterly be sped to naught;For change in anything from out its bounds Means instant death of that which was before.
Wherefore, since those things, mentioned heretofore, Suffer a changed state, they must derive From others ever unconvertible, Lest an things utterly return to naught.
Then why not rather presuppose there be Bodies with such a nature furnished forth That, if perchance they have created fire, Can still (by virtue of a few withdrawn, Or added few, and motion and order changed)Fashion the winds of air, and thus all things Forevermore be interchanged with all?
"But facts in proof are manifest," thou sayest, "That all things grow into the winds of air And forth from earth are nourished, and unless The season favour at propitious hour With rains enough to set the trees a-reel Under the soak of bulking thunderheads, And sun, for its share, foster and give heat, No grains, nor trees, nor breathing things can grow."True- and unless hard food and moisture soft Recruited man, his frame would waste away, And life dissolve from out his thews and bones;For out of doubt recruited and fed are we By certain things, as other things by others.
Because in many ways the many germs Common to many things are mixed in things, No wonder 'tis that therefore divers things By divers things are nourished. And, again, Often it matters vastly with what others, In what positions the primordial germs Are bound together, and what motions, too, They give and get among themselves; for these Same germs do put together sky, sea, lands, Rivers, and sun, grains, trees, and breathing things, But yet commixed they are in divers modes With divers things, forever as they move.
Nay, thou beholdest in our verses here Elements many, common to many worlds, Albeit thou must confess each verse, each word From one another differs both in sense And ring of sound- so much the elements Can bring about by change of order alone.