Page:The true intellectual system of the universe - the first part; wherein, all the reason and philosophy of atheism is confuted; and its impossibility demonstrated (IA trueintellectual1678cudw).pdf/42

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XIII. But to pass from Pythagoras himself; That Empedocles, who was a Pythagorean also, did Physiologize Atomically, is a thing that could hardly be doubted of, though there were no more Proof for it than that one Passage of his in his Philosophick Poems; —〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉 〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉· Nature is nothing but the Mixture and Separation of things mingled; or thus, There is no production of any thing anew, but only mixture and separation of things mingled. Which is not only to be understood of Animals, according to the Pythagorick Doctrine of the Transmigration of Souls, but also, as himself expounds it, Universally of all Bodies, that their Generation and Corruption is nothing but Mixture and Separation; or as Aristotle expresses it, 〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉, Concretion and Secretion of Parts, together with Change of Figure and Order. It may perhaps be objected, that Empedocles held four Elements, out of which he would have all other Bodies to be compounded; and that as Aristotle affirms, he made those Elements not to be transmutable into one another neither. To which we reply, that he did indeed make four Elements, as the first general Concretions of Atoms, and therein he did no more than Democritus himself, who, as Laertius writes, did from Atoms moving round in a Vortex 〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉, Generate all Concretions, Fire, Water, Air and Earth, these being Systems made out of certain Atoms. And Plato further confirms the same; for in his Book De Legibus he describes (as I suppose) that very Atheistical Hypothesis of Democritus, though without mentioning his Name, representing it in this Manner; That by the Fortuitous Motion of Senseless Matter were first made those four Elements, and then out of them afterward Sun, Moon, Stars and Earth. Now both Plutarch and Stobaeus testifie, that Empedocles compounded the four Elements themselves out of Atoms. 〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉· Empedocles makes the Elements to be compounded of other small Corpuscula, which are the least, and as it were the Elements of the Elements. And the same Stobaeus again observes, 〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉· Empedocles makes the smallest Particles and Fragments of Body (that is, Atoms) to be before the four Elements. But whereas Aristotle affirms that Empedocles denied the Transmutation of those Elements into one another, that must needs be either a slip in him, or else a fault in our Copies; not only because Lucretius, who was better versed in that Philosophy, and gives a particular Account of Empedocles his Doctrine (besides many others of the Ancients) affirms the quite contrary; but also because himself, in those Fragments of his still preserved, expresly acknowledges this Transmutation: