Chapter iii.
Empedocles—his Twofold Cause—Tenet of Transmigration.
But Empedocles, born after these, advanced likewise many statements respecting the nature of demons, to the effect that, being very numerous, they pass their time in managing earthly concerns. This person affirmed the originating principle of the universe to be discord and friendship, and that the intelligible fire of the monad is the Deity, and that all things consist of fire, and will be resolved into fire; with which opinion the Stoics likewise almost agree, expecting a conflagration. But most of all does he concur with the tenet of transition of souls from body to body, expressing himself thus:
This [philosopher] maintained the transmutation of all souls into any description of animal. For Pythagoras, the instructor of these [sages],[3] asserted that himself had been Euphorbus, who served in the expedition against Ilium, alleging that he recognised his shield. The foregoing are the tenets of Empedocles.
Chapter iv.
Heraclitus—his Universal Dogmatism—his Theory of Flux—other Systems.
But Heraclitus, a natural philosopher of Ephesus, surrendered himself to universal grief, condemning the ignorance of the entire of life, and of all men; nay, commiserating the [very] existence of mortals, for he asserted that he himself knew everything, whereas the rest of mankind nothing.[4] But
- ↑ Or, "and beast," more in keeping with the sense of the name; or "a lamb" has been suggested in the Gottingen edition of Hippolytus.
- ↑ Or, "traveller into the sea;" or, "mute ones from the sea;" or, "from the sea a glittering fish."
- ↑ Or, "being the instructor of this [philosopher]."
- ↑ Proclus, in his commentary on Plato's Timæus, uses almost the same words: "but Heraclitus, in asserting his own universal knowledge, makes out all the rest of mankind ignorant."
