osophical, and we can extract from it but little that is of speculative interest and value. It contains, however, some forcible expressions, and was highly esteemed by Lucretius, who, in his own poem, 'De Rerum Natura,' seems to have adopted it to some extent as his model, and who speaks of it and of its author in the following terms, which we cannot but regard as somewhat exaggerated in their eulogy:
" Carmina quin etiam divini pectoris ejus
Vociferantur, et exponunt præclara reperta,
Ut vix humanâ videatur stirpe creatus."
—Lucret., I. 731-733.
The fragments of this poem of Empedocles were collected about twenty years ago, and published, along with those of Xenophanes and Parmenides, by Karsten, a Dutch scholar, to whom I formerly referred.
2. The three features in the philosophy, or rather in the physics, of Empedocles by which it is best known are: First, His enunciation of a distinction which, although of no great scientific value, has kept its place in the popular mind even to the present day. I refer to his division of the constituents of the universe into the four elements, fire, air, earth, and water. Empedocles is said to have been the first who enumerated these four as the roots, ῥιζώματα of all things. Secondly, All things, he held, were formed out of these four elements by a process of mingling and of separation. This mingling was a mere mechanical aggregation or agglutination of the different elements,
