a celebrated philosopher of Agrigentum in Sicily, who flourished about the middle of the fifth century B.C. Of his history little is known. He joined in the revolution by which Thrasybulus was expelled; and amongst his countrymen he enjoyed a reputation not only for statesmanship, but for supernatural ability to control the adverse powers of nature. The general story in regard to his death is that he threw himself into the crater of Mount Aetna, in order that no trace of his earthly existence might remain, and that he might seem to have been translated into heaven. The origin of this marvellous account, however, may be found in the too personal interpretation of his haughty pretensions as a philosopher, and especially of the opening lines of his *Katharmoi*; in which, in his own name, he treats of the divinity of the human soul. According to Aristotle, however, Empedocles died peacefully at the age of sixty. It is not easy to determine his relation to the great philosophical schools of antiquity; and in the allusions which he makes to a great master, it is difficult to say whether the reference is made to Pythagoras, Parmenides, or perhaps Anaxagoras. His philosophical scheme, although in the doctrine of transmigration of souls bearing some affinity to the Pythagorean system, and in the application of a mechanical physiology being closely related to the philosophy of Anaxagoras, belongs most properly to the Eclectic school. The whole phenomena of nature were by him resolved into the combinations of four primal elements—fire, air, water, and earth—by the attractive and repulsive forces of love and hate. Neither of these forces are to be regarded as external to the matter on which they act; love or Deity residing in the original chaotic mass of things, and hate or strife in the elements individually, among which fire holds the chief place as the great centre of intellectual and sentient life. The present normal order of things arose out of chaos by successive stages of combination, as the two great principles passed from inertness to activity; and as the elements become exhausted by a ceaseless change, they gradually yield to the blending influence of love, and withdraw into the inertness of the chaotic sphere. Empedocles seems also to have recognised a third force, that of necessity, based on the unconditional decree of the Deity. His theory of cognition is in strict accordance with his philosophical scheme in regard to the construction of the universe. Man, as composed of the four elements, and subjected to the influence of the two antagonistic forces, can only rise to a comprehensive knowledge of the universal whole through the paramount influence of love. Accordingly, what is apprehended by the senses must be carefully distinguished from the results of the pure intellect alone, the pure unity... of truth residing only in the pure unity of love or Deity. The fragments of Empedocles have been collected and published by F. W. Sturz, Leipzig, 1805.