so much as 'tis given to mortal thought to
reach." Then follows an invocation in true Epic style to the
"much-wooed white-armed virgin Muse," wherein he prays that "folly and
impurity may be far from the lips of him the teacher, and that sending
forth her swift-reined chariot from the shrine of Piety, the Muse may
grant him to hear so much as is given to mortal hearing."

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Then follows a warning uttered by the Muse to her would-be disciple:
"Thee the flowers of mortal distinctions shall not seduce to utter in
daring of heart more than thou mayest, that thereby thou mightest soar
to the highest heights of wisdom. And now behold and see, availing
thyself of every device whereby the truth may in each matter be
revealed, trusting not more to sight for thy learning than to hearing,
nor to hearing with its loud echoings more than to the revelations of
the tongue, nor to any one of the many ways whereby there is a path to
knowledge. Keep a check on the revelation of the hands also, and
apprehend each matter in the way whereby it is made plain to thee."

The correction of the one sense by the others, and of all by reason,
this Empedocles deemed the surest road to knowledge. He thus
endeavoured to hold a middle place between the purely abstract
reasoning of the Eleatic philosophy and the unreasoned first guesses of
ordinary observation suggested by this or that sense, and chiefly by
the eyes. The senses might supply the raw materials of knowledge,
unordered, unrelated, nay even chaotic and mutually destructive; but in
their contradictions of each other he hoped to find a starting-point
for order amidst the seeming chaos; reason should weigh, reason should
reject, but reason also should find a residuum of truth.

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[181]

In our next fragment we have his enunciation in symbolical language of
the _four_ elements, by him first formulated: "Hear first of all what
are the root principles of all things, being four in number,--Zeus the
bright shiner (_i.e._ fire), and Hera (air), and life-bearing Aidoneus
(earth), and Nestis (water), who with her teardrops waters the fountain
of mortality. Hear also this other that I will tell thee. Nothing of
all that perisheth ever is created, nothing ever really findeth an end
in death. There is naught but a mingling, and a parting again of that
which was mingled, and this is what men call a coming into being.
Foolish they, for in them is no far-reaching thought, that they sh