Chapter 4

'Third class' -
Erroneous systems about the nature of the human soul
which posited the nature of the soul in ideas, that is, confused subject with object

31. When philosophical meditation finally came to reflect on the nature of feeling, and understood that this activity could not be explained through material elements alone, thinkers had to introduce into the sphere of reflective, scientific thought the activity of the intelligence where they could finally find the nature of the intellective soul.

However, it is more difficult to concentrate reflection on the intelligent subject than to leap to the object and reflect exclusively upon it. Thought finishes in the object; the path taken by thought, and thought itself, do not become object except through some later, reflective operation. This explains why perhaps none of the ancients succeeded in completely separating the subject from the object, that is, the soul from the idea. The greatest of them, having abandoned the materialism of their predecessors and even risen above sense, rushed unhesitantly to the idea without stopping to consider the intelligence which thinks the idea. In other words, they posited both intelligence and intellective soul in ideas.

32. I. Pythagoras. — The greatest of these philosophers is, I think, Pythagoras, about whom Plutarch remarks: 'Having said that the soul is a self-moving number, he then goes on to substitute number for mind.'(50) Numbers, however, are nothing more than abstract ideas. If the mind is a number, the mind or the intellective soul becomes confused with the ideas that illuminate the soul; subject is confused with object.

33. This concept of Pythagorean numbers was set out in different ways by the ancients precisely because it was an abstraction and, as such, left an immense field to be determined by Pythagoras' disciples; it was also necessary for them to determine the concept in one way or another and draw some ens from it. Aristotle, who was uncertain about the significance he should give to number in Pythagoras, set out to confute it according to three meanings: that is, when understood as pure numbers, as tiny bodies and as mathematical points.(51) Strangely enough, he did not even hint that Pythagoras' numbers were ideas, although this had been affirmed by some of the ancients. Nor did he even mention that these numbers are 'abstracts taken as the basis for reasoning about the entities of which they are abstracts' which, I think, is the most natural and true explanation of Pythagoras' numbers.

34. A comparison will help us here. When a mathematician wants to express the theory of the continuous quantity of bodies, he forms mental, abstract bodies in which he retains only extension and shapes. The rest he rejects. He now reasons about these hypothetical or, better, postulate-bodies, and builds up his theory. Thus Pythagoras, or whoever first spoke about numbers in the Pythagorean manner in order to provide a theory of entia, formed abstract entia by retaining only number from all that is found in entia. The theory of entia was, therefore, drawn solely from their nature as numbers.

My conviction that this is the true interpretation of Pythagorean numbers is based on the following observation. The Italic philosophers, with their great capacity for abstraction, were led by philosophical instinct, which tends towards the universal, to explore abstraction with great eagerness. They were in a completely spiritual region where, still unaccustomed to the novelty of a world cut off from conditions of matter and time, they persuaded themselves that this discovery included the whole of wisdom. We only need to consider how Xenophanes devoted all his thought to the question of the unity of things and how, through Parmenides and Zeno, the great philosophical problem of the time soon became, as a result of abstraction, the most elevated that could be imagined. The problem was: are all things one or many?

Careful consideration shows that the question debated between the supporters of unity and the supporters of plurality was nothing more than the question of numbers. There was certainly no need to add anything else to unity and plurality; these two abstracts could be discussed without further addition. Consequently, all interpretations of Pythagorean numbers which add something to determine the numbers, seem to be posterior to Pythagoras. They are no longer questions of theory (the only thing which was sought at the time of the first Italic philosophers), but questions of the application of the theory of numbers.

35. In fact, teaching about numbers needed to be, as a completely pure theory, applicable to all entia; it was the pure mathematics of ontology, a kind of universal language. This explains the different forms which this theory took when it was gradually applied to entia. Theory and application were not maintained as two different parts of ontology but confused or, rather, pure theory was lost sight of.

36. The pure ontological theory of numbers, as it seems to have been posited by the first Italian philosophers, did not therefore apply to the soul more than to other entia. Instead, it was able to be applied and should have been applied to every kind of being. Moreover, because numbers are the most abstract things that can be considered amongst entia, they were called first things, as Aristotle tells us: 'The elements of numbers were called the elements of all entia.'(52)

This theory of numbers was applied
1. to extension, and the result was the principles of Pythagorean mathematics;
2. to bodies, and the result was Pythagorean physics and particularly the teaching about indivisibles;(53)
3. to God, and the result was Pythagorean theology.
Finally it was applied to the soul, and the result was Pythagorean psychology.

37. Unless I am mistaken, the following questions must have arisen in the application of the teaching of numbers to the soul: 1. Is unity present in the soul? 2. Is duality or trinity or quaternity, and so on, present in the soul? In other words, is anything rigorously one, or two, three, four, and so on?
The Pythagorean solution to such questions was this: only one, two, three, four, are present in the soul.

38. Where was unity found in the soul?
According to Plutarch, in his exposition of Pythagorean teaching, it was found in the mind:
The intellect is one because it is considered as a unity. Human beings, you see, are many and it is impossible to know each one through sense because they are infinite and cannot be comprehended. But we form the idea of human being in our thought without its being like anyone in particular, as we do with the idea of horse. The particulars are infinite, and all these species and genera are comprehended through unity. When a definition is assigned to each genus, we say that one of them must be called a rational animal or a reasoning animal.(54)

This means that unity is posited in the mind which considers many individuals with one and the same specific idea, and many species with one and the same generic idea. But it is even more reasonable to posit unity in the mind which embraces all the genera of things with a single idea of being in general. In this idea real, multiple things are reduced to perfect unity, as well as every single determined ideal thing, whether specific or generic.

39. This idea must, I think, have been the God of Pythagoras whom this philosopher defined as the number of numbers,(55) just as Plato would later call God the ens of entia.(56) But the error that we are now indicating consists in confusing mind with idea or at least in having repeatedly spoken in a way conducive to confusion between one and the other. Consequently, the subjective nature of the mind was not sufficiently distinguished from the objective nature of the idea.

40. Nevertheless, it seems that prior to Socrates and Plato the Pythagoreans, who were certainly aware of the unity of the mind, had not explicitly expressed, or at least constantly expressed, the reason for this unity which was to be found in the nature of ideas. Aristotle says that Plato, drawing on Socrates' manner of disputation,(57) added ideas to numbers. Perhaps it would be better to say that Plato simply spoke more philosophically about the nature of ideas, and gave greater importance to this teaching.

41. Where do we find two in the soul? According to the Pythagoreans, in knowledge. Knowledge is object and we see the error and confusion caused by their making knowledge, in which two is found, correspond to mind in which they posited one. They should have made knowledge correspond to idea, and reason correspond to mind (reasoning). However, it is not easy to grasp how they understood knowledge. Probably they meant any proposition or judgment relating to abstract ideas and consequently necessary. Such a judgment, if it is to be formulated, does in fact require at least two terms, subject and predicate.

42. Where then did they find three in the soul? They found it in opinion relative to contingent things, and therefore in those judgments in which conformity between predicate and subject is not necessary and evident. This is normally the case in synthetical judgments.(58) Because a predicate cannot be united to a subject in this kind of judgment without the presence of an alien reason which determines the mind to make the judgment, there must be, besides predicate and subject, a third element enabling opinion. Consequently three is given over to opinion.

43. Finally, the Pythagoreans found the number four in sense, that is, in judgments about sensible things. They did this, I think, because sense is an insufficient reason for applying a predicate to a subject unless it has first been perceived by the intellect. Consequently, even the simplest judgment that can be made as a consequence of sense requires at least four elements. Take, for example, the following judgment: 'This red thing is an ens.' Here, we can distinguish 1. the sensation of red; 2. the intellective apprehension of the sensation; 3. the necessity of an ens operating where the sensation of red is present; 4. an affirmation.

44. Plato, who makes opinion come from sense, and knowledge from the mind, reduces four to two.

45. By considering that the four numbers noted in the soul derive from each other, we can see how the soul in the Pythagorean system is a moving number. Four derives from three because judgment about sensible things presupposes the faculty of synthetical judgments; three derives from two because the faculty of synthetical judgments presupposes the faculty of analytical judgments; two derives from one because every judgment presupposes an idea.

Plutarch summarises Pythagoras' system as follows:

46. II. Empedocles (438-378 BC). — From Pythagoras we pass to the Pythagoreans and amongst them to Empedocles. — I think that the elements which, according to Empedocles, made up the soul were ideas of the elements, and not material elements. And it is certain that some of his disciples understood it in this way.(60) If this is correct, the philosopher of Agrigento would be absolved in great part from the obviously absurd error of materialism. Indeed, he could be accused of the opposite error, that is, of changing the nature of the intellective soul into the nature of ideas themselves. This would mean deifying the soul because the nature of the idea has something of the divine. Here I shall explain at length the reasons which led me to this persuasion.

47. The first is this. In interpreting the mind of a philosopher whose work has come down to us in only a few fragments, we have to take great account of philosophical tradition. We must not consider the philosopher in isolation as though he had invented everything of himself irrespective of prior schools. This consideration is even more important when the philosopher lived in an age notable for the study of philosophy, as Empedocles did. The extant Ionic philosophers, and to a greater extent those of Samos, Colophon and Elea, were already very famous and we can in fact only marvel at the level they reached. Is it possible, therefore, that Empedocles, immersed in discussion of these highly elevated questions, could fall into the crude, plebeian error of making the intellective soul consist of material elements, and ignore or cancel everything sublime which had been said prior to him about this argument?

48. Moreover, this materialism, reflected and professed in an open, shameless way, does not pertain to the great period of philosophical formation. Careful consideration allows us to see that a period of philosophical corruption coincided with sophism and dissolute customs. The first philosophies certainly contained materialism deep within themselves, but this materialism was proper and special to them. It sprang from lack of reflection and was intermingled with spiritualism. The division between spirit and matter had not yet been apprehended carefully by the mind which affirmed neither spirit nor matter but spoke of both as though they were one.

49. We should also consider that any criticism arguing to unsure knowledge must rely on sure knowledge. But it is completely certain that Empedocles, because he belonged to the Italian school, professed Pythagoreanism. Is it possible, therefore, that a Pythagorean or if you wish a Pythagorist(61) had no other teaching to offer about the soul other than make it consist of totally material elements?

50. Moreover, our philosopher was never numbered by antiquity in the list of materialist philosophers, whom Cicero called 'plebeian', but placed in the company of Pythagoras, Parmenides, Anaxagoras, Plato and people of this nature. Aristotle posits this difference between Empedocles on one side and Plato and the Pythagoreans on the other: the latter posited one and ens in the essence alone of things;(62) Empedocles however presupposed friendship before unity. Aristotle, having proposed various questions, adds:

A little later he repeats the same thing, but hesitantly as if the opinion that Empedocles presupposed friendship before one and ens were rather a conjecture on Aristotle's part than something said by Empedocles.(64) In other words, as Plato and the Pythagoreans explained Pythagoras' numbers by reducing them to essences and to ideas, so Empedocles would have determined the abstract one with friendship, retaining the basis of the Italic teaching and developing it in his own way.

51. Why does the philosopher of Agrigento make the soul consist of all the elements? Because he wants to explain the knowledge of all things, of which the soul is susceptible, by moving from the principle: 'Like is known with like'. But this opinion came to him from the school of Pythagoras, an eminently spiritual school which professed such teaching. He must therefore be understood according to the thinking of this school. Chalcidius says expressly:

This is an opinion, therefore, which Empedocles followed: it was not original. Again:

The soul, therefore, has in itself the likeness of elements, not the material elements themselves. This is consistent with the feeling of the Pythagorean and Eleatic school in which Empedocles was taught.

52. Empedocles recognises God as pure mind without any corporeal accretions. In some of the verse which has come down to us, he concludes, after having said that the Almighty is non-feeling and comes into the human heart through the extensive path of faith, that he has no limbs:

These lines remind us, as we have seen, of lines in Xenophanes.(68) They show how the Empedoclean teaching is based on that of preceding philosophers.

53. When Sextus placed Empedocles amongst the Italic philosophers, he testified that Empedocles admitted a spirit communicating with the whole of nature and dispensing life to everything.(69) This is ample affirmation that Empedocles was not a pure materialist and could not have made up our souls of material elements since we ourselves, according to him, were animated by the spiritual soul which pervades the whole world and is mind alone.(70) And does he not declare that human souls were of a divine race come down to earth into exile, as it were, into a black space wrapped in bodily clothing, constrained to migrate from one corporeal form to another for thirty thousand years until they had been purified? Here the traces of tradition about the ancient fault and about Pythagorean metempsychosis are obvious. Is it possible, therefore, when this author says in a poetic form that human souls are composed of all elements, that he wants the soul to be understood as composed of every kind of matter?

54. Again, we need to consider that Empedocles often says that his elements are gods. This is the name given by Plato and the Platonists to ideas. Aristotle affirms that according to Empedocles the elements are of their nature anterior to the gods. Without doubt he says this because the gods themselves are made of these elements, although he adds that the elements were (*). (71)

In other words, Empedocles admits several generations of gods or demons, amongst which he posits human souls themselves. This is fully consonant with the teachings of the Platonists who made every idea a god and, indeed, composed human souls of ideas. Hence Empedocles having changed the elements into persons gave them the names of divinities.(72) This was equivalent to establishing superstition and idolatry on the basis of knowledge in imitation of more ancient philosophers. Amongst these was Pherecydes whose book, (*), dealt with the elements and their mixture. These sages had not been able to rise mentally to the clear knowledge of God, nor did they have sufficient heart to combat the common, gross error of idolatry in which they themselves were educated.

55. My opinion is considerably strengthened by a place in Aristotle where he says expressly that Empedocles' teaching about the human soul is similar to that of Plato:(73)

But Aristotle then goes on to name Empedocles and Plato as philosophers who considered not motion but the power of feeling and knowing. Consequently they thought that the soul was composed of elements suitable for knowing other elements, that is, of ideas. There is no doubt that this is precisely what Plato understood. Aristotle continues:

56. Several important considerations have to be made about these matters. First, there is no doubt that Plato made the intellective soul, that is, the mind, consist of ideas, rather than material elements. Indeed, in Timaeus, the body results from these elements, and the body for Plato, as it was previously for Empedocles, is a kind of prison for the soul whose regular movements the body disturbs. Consequently, he says that 'the soul, when initially enclosed in the bonds of the material body, becomes delirious, arational.'(75) In this way he explains the innate ignorance of human beings and the irrational motions of children who have not reached the age of reflection.

57. Moreover, we need to consider that, according to Aristotle, the two philosophers in making the soul consist of elements did so by starting from the principle that 'everything is known with something similar to it.' Consequently, the elements with which the soul knows the elements were similar to the former without being the elements themselves. We know only too well that Plato when speaking of 'similar', means the idea. We are dealing, therefore, with ideal elements in which alone resides the likeness of things with which the soul knows.(76)

58. Moreover, we can ask what is the first length, the first breadth, the first height, according to Plato. It is nothing more than exemplary, essential length, breadth and height, that is, the idea which according to him, is the cause of real things. The same is true of the idea of one, which is the exemplary principle of animal. Plato claimed that the same essence present in the idea was also present in things. This means spiritualising things rather than materialising ideas.

59. I think it is worthwhile expounding here more extensively Plato's teaching about the double species of elements, that is, the real and ideal elements. We can then ask if the fragments and witnesses to Empedocles' teaching which have come down to us tell us anything similar.

Two of Italy's greatest men, Parmenides and his disciple, Zeno, understood perfectly well and demonstrated that the existence of the material universe cannot be explained without recourse to some spiritual principle which gives it consistency and unity. Both men were powerful dialecticians (Zeno made dialectics a science); they were not content to enunciate solemn but detached opinions in the Eastern fashion but undertook to provide a logical demonstration of their thesis. For this purpose they fixed their attention on the nature of the corporeal continuum and argued as follows.

Every assignable part in a corporeal continuum embraces itself alone; the rest remains outside it. But the assignable parts in a continuum have no end. Hence the continuous, assignable parts never cease to exclude from themselves a portion of what is extended. If each part does not cease to exclude from itself that which is not itself, then itself is never found; if it is never found, it does not exist. If the first continua do not exist, no continuum can exist. But the nature of body consists in the continuum. Hence the body does not exist per se only. But if you add a simple object (the mind, according to the concept of these philosophers) which can at the same time embrace the whole continuum with a single act and not through parts of its own, then the continuum stands. It exists as something simple not in virtue of the simplicity of the subject but in an essential relationship with the subject. Mind therefore (which was the subject they were referring to) is the foundation of body.

In other words, mind is a necessary condition for the existence of body. This kind of argument is ineluctable because it is evident that the continuum cannot be reduced to mathematical points. This is even more true about body where these points would either act only in themselves and thus in coming together would never produce anything feelable, or would have such a sphere of continuous action around themselves that the continuum would be presumed once more to exist.(77) But what is the continuum in the mind? In so far as it is a possible continuum, it is an idea; but in so far as the spirit affirms the continuum, it is a continuum realised in feeling and in matter but always considered by the mind and in relationship to the mind.(78) The essence of the continuum contemplated in the idea is therefore the unity which brings into existence the material universe, an extended continuum modified and modifiable in various ways.

60. The argument which Parmenides and Zeno drew from the nature of the continuum (that something eternal had to exist prior to all the phenomena of the world in order to give them existence and consistency) was perhaps the greatest light to illumine the mind of Plato. There is no doubt that he took the whole foundation of his teaching from this principle posited by the two great Italian philosophers. But, like all great men, in appropriating the Eleatic teaching he gave it an original twist of his own. The need of eternal unity, argued by Parmenides and Zeno from the nature of space, was deduced by Plato with a similar kind of reasoning from the consideration also of time, and from the changes which arise in time for material and feelable things.
As you see, I have reduced the argument of the ancient sages of Elea to a brief form which, it seems to me, is extremely efficacious. I want to do the same with Plato's argument. I shall take the foundation of his thought and provide it with all the force of which it is susceptible.

Parmenides and Zeno's argument drew its force from this principle: 'Corporeal substance (prescinding from the mind) is nothing more than the relationship of several juxtapositioned substances. Substance, therefore, if present, must be found in the elements, that is, in the first extended elements. But these elements are not found. Beyond these tiny extended elements we can see only mathematical points which are not extended substances. Extended substances or bodies do not exist, therefore, without the unity of the mind.'

Plato argues in the same way from the mutability of things in time. 'If a thing were to exist only in a mathematical point of time, it would not be because a mathematical point has no duration. Consequently, the thing would not last; and that which has no duration is in fact nothing.' This can be proved in another way: 'Let us grant that something lasts for a mathematical instant and no longer. Now, in which instant would it cease to be? In the same instant in which it is, or not? If in the former, it would be and not be at the same time, that is, the instant in which it were placed in being would be the instant in which it was annihilated. This is a contradiction.
Therefore, it ceases in another, following instant. But if the instant when it is destroyed must be distinguished from that in which it exists, there must be, between one instant and the other, a middle time in which it endures. Therefore that which lasts a single instant is absurd because repugnant to thought.'

Now, if we consider the material universe without adding anything at all which comes from our mind, the universe is changed into something absurd. No one can say that such a universe exists in the past or in the future; it can exist only in the present. But in which present? The present duration, however small, is never found. If it were to be found after an infinite number of divisions, it would be reduced to a mathematical point of time. Such is the whole existence of the material world considered on its own separate from every mind, because every period of time is outside of and excluded from every other. But the duration of an instant is not duration; the ens which is supposed to endure only for an instant does not endure at all. As we showed, this is absurd. Hence the material universe alone does not exist without the mind which contemplates its identity in a certain time (past and future) by embracing the whole with a totally simply act.

Thus Plato establishes the necessity of ideas as cause of things. The way he expresses himself is certainly different from the way I argued, but the foundation of his thought has not changed. He refrains from observing the continual mutability of things; I have pushed this mutability to its extreme, showing that the existence of material things is something so fluid that it has no duration. At the same time, some duration is necessary for its existence.

61. Let us apply this teaching now to the elements which, according to the ancients, make up the material world. Plato says that the earth dissolves into water, water into air, and air into fire, the most subtle of the elements. Already we find some analogy with the teaching of Empedocles who asserted that fire is the principle of the other three elements.(79) Beginning from the continual changeableness of the elements, he concludes that we must necessarily have recourse to a stable subject of these changes:

But that which serves as subject for these ever-changeable modes is the very substance that sometimes becomes fire, sometimes air, sometimes water, sometimes earth. This substance, or first matter, or subject of all qualities is, according to Plato, invisible and conceivable only by the mind.

Plato establishes three genera: that which is generated; that in which something is generated; the third in whose likeness something is generated. The third he calls 'father', the second 'mother', the first 'child'. Matter, that is, the subject of all the changes, in which everything is generated, is therefore mother. He says about it:

At this point, the great man teaches that the substance or matter which forms the subject of all feelable modifications is presupposed by the mind and not furnished by sense. Nor would anyone be far from the truth who saw being in general in this intelligible first matter which is transformed into all things. Only being in general has the characteristics assigned by Plato to such an invisible species, susceptive of all forms but not determined by any. And although in nature some reality has to correspond to this species, nevertheless the concept of this reality would be absurd unless the mind, by uniting to it the idea, did not give it consistence. As we said, only the mind can embrace duration, the condition of existence. This continuous duration is in the mind and given by the mind alone for real things to share in. Hence Plato says that his intelligible matter is not generated from any of the elements. He concludes, therefore, that material elements are not true elements, but likenesses of true elements.

However, his arguments descend from the formless, intelligible species which, as we said, can only be ens furnished by the mind and as it were inserted into the perception of sensible, transient things. Plato begins to speak of other, more determined species, that is, of fire as the first element and then of the other elements. He asks: 'Is there any fire which is permanent in itself and separate from matter?' and 'Is this true of the other elements?' He proves that there must be intelligible essences of such things, and that the words 'fire', 'air', and so on, are much more applicable to them than to material things. He concludes:

This species, so elegantly described, is the idea, or better, the essence of the thing intuited by the mind, before which the real thing fades. Plato can therefore add:

This, according to Plato, is the characteristic of material elements, whose essences are intelligible. These are the true elements: true fire, true air, true water, true earth. Material elements are nothing more than their fleeting likenesses. According to Plato, the intellective soul is made up of such intelligible essences. But if it is true, as Aristotle says, that Empedocles makes the intellective soul from the four elements, we should surely say that he also distinguished intelligible elements, that is, the species and exemplars of the real elements.

62. This conjecture becomes certainty for me when I consider another place in Aristotle where he clearly affirms that Empedocles placed the essence of things in ideas. Aristotle affirms, towards the end of the first book of Metaphysics:

63. Amongst more recent interpreters of Empedocles' mind, we find Philoponus who understood Empedocles' elements as though they were notions or ideas. Philoponus thought this was quite clear:

64. But let us go on now to Empedocles' teaching about friendship and concord. This will further strengthen our interpretation of the elements with which he makes up the soul. Besides the four elements, Empedocles admitted two principles which he called concord and discord. But, according to writers later than Aristotle (and according to Aristotle himself, as we have seen in the places cited),(85) Empedocles' concord and discord correspond to Pythagoras' and Parmenides' unity and plurality. Careful consideration shows that two worlds are outlined in these two elements of Empedocles: the intelligible and essential world in which ideal elements are present, and the sensible and image-like world composed of real elements. This is especially true if Empedocles, an undoubted Pythagorean, was also a disciple of Parmenides himself, as Alcidemas tells us.(86)

65. Here it will be helpful to refer to Syrianus, a commentator of Aristotle, who defends Empedocles against the accusation of self-contradiction - an accusation brought by Aristotle himself, who was never wholly favourable towards his predecessors.

These words are in keeping with Empedocles' time and his education. They fully repudiate the wrong inflicted on this noble luminary of the Italic school who was presumed by so many authors to be stupid enough to imagine that the human soul was made up of material elements.(88)

66. John Philoponus, another commentator of Aristotle, says that in attributing the same mistake to Empedocles, Aristotle praises concord as the cause of the divine, intelligible world and blames discord as the disintegrating cause of the divine world.(89) Again, according to Philoponus, Aristotle is unfair to Empedocles. Philoponus adds that the two principles of friendship and discord are recognised by reason rather than by sense and were, according to Empedocles, incorporeal bodies.(90) Again, Clement of Alexandria and others have preserved for us a verse of Empedocles which they refer to his friendship, calling it the object of his intellect.(91)

67. Nevertheless, it remains inexplicable for some that Empedocles could say that concord, which is destined to unite, could be called quasi-matter. Aristotle and Themistius believed he was contradicting himself and unable to explain how friendship itself could be both the moving and uniting cause and the material cause of things.(92)

But the apparent contradiction vanishes if we begin with the principle that 1. Empedocles understood friendship as the ONE, as Plotinus (93) and many other ancients(94) say expressly, and 2. this harmonises with the school he professed. We ask: what is one? and answer: ens in general. We ask: what is ens in general? and answer: the essence of ens intuited in the idea, that is, ideal ens, intelligible ens. But this ens has precisely two functions in our regard:

1. It is a power uniting and drawing together material things. Following the arguments of Parmenides and Plato, we saw that the material universe would vanish if the mind did not add ens to it. It is ens which gives stability and unity to constantly divisible and flowing things. Consequently, the ancients even called Empedocles' friendship (*) and (*). (95)

2. It is intelligible matter precisely because that which is understood in all things is ens in its various terms and realisations. The reality alone of ens would not furnish the mind with any object. The mind could neither conceive nor affirm with it alone. Hence matter UNDERSTOOD by the mind in all real things is always ens. This, properly speaking, had to be understood about the first 'one', the Pythagorean God which, according to me, is the idea of being. It is also called the number of numbers, the fount of other numbers, which represents the species and genera of things. But because each genus and each species possesses unity and because, according to the Pythagoreans, these concepts unify individuals, Aristotle says that Pythagoras and Alcmaeon, his disciple, seem to place numbers in the genus of matter.(96)

68. Moreover, because Aristotle puts Plato with Empedocles, it will not be out of place to indicate Serranus' opinion about Plato's intelligible matter. Serranus, in his commentary on Timaeus, says, according to Dardi Bembo's translation:

69. Aristotle, therefore, is splitting hairs when he affirms that mover and matter are different concepts. He tries to force Empedocles to say whether his friendship is friendship under the concept of mover (that is, something drawing together, unifying) or under the concept of matter.(97) In fact, as we distinguish what is essentially one from what is one through participation, so we can distinguish essential friendship from friendship through participation. For Empedocles, essential ens, essential one and essential friendship is the matter of all understood objects; participated friendship is the uniting cause which, from the indefinite plurality of things subject to space and time, makes a single, fixed ens the object of the intellect. It is right to say, therefore, that Empedocles' friendship is friendship under the two concepts of 1. that which unifies and 2. (intelligible) matter, despite the great, apparent diversity between the two.

70. This also explains places in certain authors where Empedocles' friendship and one appear as two things, not one only. Careful consideration of these places shows that all of them refer to the production of unity in contingent things. To say that friendship produces one in all things — as Simplicius does(98) — means simply that one through essence produces one through participation, that is, essential friendship produces participated friendship.(99)

71. Again, Empedocles' friendship was compared by Philoponus and Themistius to concept or to information about things.(100) In other words, Empedocles' friendship is ultimately nothing more than the unity of intelligible ens and its intrinsic order. There is also a place in Stobaeus which seems to me to refer Empedocles' opinion, although his name appears to have vanished along with some other words: we read that discord and quarrelling are nothing more than species.(101)

72. Pythagoras' one (102) was given various names (103) by these philosophers: it was called God, Apollo, matter, chaos.(104) Similar names were given to Empedocles' friendship. The first two names are indicative of something spiritual, intellectual and non-material. For the third, matter, I have already provided an explanation. But we still have to see how friendship can also be called 'chaos'. If we note that one is ens in general, which can also be denominated 'first, intelligible matter', we already understand how Empedocles' friendship is susceptible of the term '(intelligible) chaos'; it is being in general in which no distinct, particular ens is present.

73. Again we note how Aristotle's criticism of Empedocles is badly founded. He claims that Empedocles contradicts himself by sometimes saying that discord is the principle of destruction and sometimes that discord produces material things. But if Empedocles' discord is transported into the intelligible world, it becomes the faculty through which the understanding distinguishes things in the unity of ens,(105) and hence the faculty which serves to originate singular and finite beings in the mind.(106) Real things come forth, therefore, from the mind of the first maker because God operates with the power of the mind.(107)

74. Other objections of Aristotle against Empedocles' system also vanish. Aristotle says:

But Empedocles could reply that ideal elements are made up like real elements and, therefore, that things composed of real elements are known through things composed of ideal elements.

75. Simplicius and others maintain that Empedocles reduces his elements to two and, finally, to one alone which he calls necessity or the monad of necessity. This, however, is not a contradiction: being in general, which is one, is also the principle of necessity because it imposes the condition through which that which is, is ens. Again, Simplicius does not consider friendship absolutely, but rather as distinct from the monad. In other words Simplicius looks at friendship from a different point of view, that is, as expressing one in many things.(109) Hence in other writers we find 'monad of necessity' instead of 'form of necessity'.

76. This explains why Empedocles sometimes claims that everything comes from one, sometimes from friendship which is one applied to many. Thus he places necessity at the head of his principles and elements as their cause because intelligible being, from which everything comes, is necessary and imposes its necessary laws on all things.(110)

Notes

(50) De Placit. Phil, bk. 4, c. 2; Theodoret, Graec. Affect.

(51) De Anima, bk. 2.

(52) Metaph., bk. 1, c. 5.

(53) Cf. Introduzione allo studio della Religione, pt. 1, bk. 2, §3 for Gerdil's explanation of this Pythagorean teaching about corporeal elements.

(54) Dell'opinioni de' Filosofi, bk. 1 (Adriani's translation).

(55) Hierocl., p. 166.

(56) In Timaeus.

(57) Metaph., bk. 1, c. 5, where it seems that the Pythagoreans have applied the theory of numbers only to mathematical bodies and sensible things. Aristotle, we must note, shows himself genuinely or fictiously uncertain about the meaning to be attributed to Pythagorean numbers.

(58) Cf. NE, vol. 1, 342, for the difference between analytical and synthetical judgments.

(59) De Placit. Phil, bk. 1, c. 3.

(60) Rinnovamento, bk. 3, c. 51.

(61) Diogenes Laertius, bk. 9, c. 21.

(62) Note, essence is what is intuited in the idea. We are therefore in the world of intelligible things.

(63) Metaph., bk. 3, c. 1.

(64) The place in Aristotle is: 'The most difficult thing to consider and supremely necessary to know is whether in fact ens and one are themselves the essences of entia, or whether something else must be attributed to both. In other words, (must we simply state) that this is one, an ens, or must we investigate what ens and one are, as if some other essence underlay them. Some think that they (one and ens) possess their nature in one way, others in another.

Plato and the Pythagoreans said that there is only ens and one; such is their nature that essence is both one and ens. But those who studied nature, like Empedocles, say that one is ens, as if reducing one to something better known; because it seems that ens is friendship, friendship causes all things to be one' (Metaph., bk. 3, cc. 4, 5). Karsten claims that the words 'better known' must refer to Empedocles as the most famous of the natural philosophers and thinks the passage should be corrected to give this sense. I myself think it can stay as it is. If we believe that one is subject to ens and that this ens is reduced to friendship, one is certainly being reduced to something we know better, because we know ens and friendship better than we know the highly abstract one.

(65) 'The beginnings of all things' would fit ideas excellently.

(66) Ad Timaeus, p. 131 (Sturz).

(67) Karsten, vv. 362-363.

(68) Particularly the following verse, which Simplicius attributes to Xenophanes: 'By mind and thought is everything effortlessly governed.'

(69) Sext. Emp., Adv. Math., 1, 127. Granted this communion of spirit between everything in nature, Empedocles posited a right common to everything (Framm., v. 404 ss., Karsten).

(70) The fact that Empedocles made God the soul of the world may have made Clement of Alexandria place him among the atheists (Protrept., 42 C). On the other hand, Sextus Empiricus classes him among those who 'abandon God', and we must consider him so.

(71) De Generat. et Corrupt., bk. 1, c. 4.

(72) Cf. Sturz and Karsten for passages from Menander and other ancient authors.

(73) Cicero, too, classes Empedocles with Pythagoras and Plato, making the materialists the common enemy of these great men: (De Natura Deor., bk. 1, c. 33).

(74) De Anima, bk. 1.

(75) Timaeus [44 a8-b21].

(76) NE, vol. 3, 1180-1189.

(77) NE, vol. 2, 820-830.

(78) We ourselves add the distinction between essence of an ideal continuum and realised essence. Both are objects of the mind, which comes to it through different action. Parmenides and Zeno realised that essence had to be immutable and one, but went no further; they did not see that not only the accidents of things but their substances form part of reality (although only in the real state) and are therefore dependent on the essence, which is ideal. Even Plato failed to see this important truth. The result was the errors of the Eleatic and Platonic schools, who allotted to the idea what should have been allotted to things, in so far as things have a realised essence (substance and accidents), as we will see better in the course of our discussion.

(79) Cf. Karsten, De Empedoclis philosophia, §6.

(80) Timaeus.

(81) Aristotle fails to see that it is a question not of singulars but of ideas. Ideas, although the means for knowing singulars, are always universals.

(82) Empedocles would have probably replied that matter does indeed consist of four elements, but that these exist through their ideal essences, not through themselves.

(83) Cf. also De Partibus Animalium, bk. 1, c. 1.

(84) Philopon., De Anim., bk. 1, c. 1; cf. Karsten.

(85) Aristotle confirms this in Physic., 1.

(86) Diogenes, bk. 8, 56. Philosophy first considered plurality. It then moved to the system of absolute unity, which was outlined by Xenophanes and perfected by Parmenides. Finally it studied the link between unity and plurality. Aristotle expressly tells us that Anaxagoras and Empedocles made such a study, 'And all those who, like Empedocles and Anaxagoras, say that entia are ONE and MANY' (De Physic. aud., bk. 1). Anaximander had taken the first step by moving from absolute unity to plurality; he spoke of producing plurality 'by separating contraries from unity'. Cf. Aristotle, in the quoted passage.

(87) Ad Arist. Metaph., bk. 2.

(88) Syrianus, commenting about another passage in Aristotle (In Metaph., bk. 13), defends Empedocles and speaks about the intellectual world, that is, about the ideas posited by Empedocles. He says: 'Empedocles cannot on this occasion (nor perhaps on any other) be justly accused of saying that the mixture is dissolved through discord. Discord in itself is not corruptive (in fact it produces the world). According to him, the Sphere (the intelligible world) can only be dissolved by someone who, RELYING UPON THE WORDS used in all his THEOLOGY, HAS MISUNDERSTOOD him. Discord generates plurality and otherness; friendship generates identity and union. Hence, friendship is supreme in intellectual things (Sturz much prefers 'intelligible things'), but discord in feelable things. Both give rise to unity and plurality, either of which can be supreme.'

(89) Ad Arist. De Generat. et Corrupt., bk. 2, p. 59.

(90) Ad Arist. Phys. Auscult., bk. 1, d. 1-2; De Anima.

(91) Strom., 5, p. 522.

(92) Aristotle, Metaph., bk. 12, c. 10, and Themistius, Paraphras. in XII librum Arist. 'Empedocles' opinion is absurd. He says that concord is something good. This is the principle which as mover brings things together and (as his words indicate) IS LIKE MATTER. It is therefore a part of what is brought together.'

(93) Ennenads, 5, bk. 2, c. 9.).

(94) The passages collected by Sturz are: 'Empedocles said that ONE is friendship; Anaximander, infinite air' (from Alexander of Aphrodisias, Ad Arist. Metaph., p. 89). Again, 'Natural philosophers, such as Empedocles, subjected everything else to ENS and ONE, and considered them in this way. Empedocles, basing himself on ONE, which is better known, said that ONE IS PREDICATED OF FRIENDSHIP because for him friendship is necessarily the cause impelling things to be one (ibid., p. 328)'. Here ONE would be a predicate of friendship, that is, an elementary, abstract idea included in the idea of friendship.

Sirianus expresses it this way: 'I think that Empedocles himself did not see friendship as something different from ONE itself, not because it is totally uncomposed, but as made up from an unending duality which he calls discord. Through this duality THE FIRST ENS SUBSISTS, as do ALL INTELLIGIBLE THINGS and SENSIBLE DISTINCTION' (Ad Arist. Metaph., bk. 2, p. 8). This rather obscure passage can be understood as follows: Empedocles understands friendship as ONE but not as abstract oneness which contains only the concept of unity. He means the ONE to which real ens is subject. This duality (of what is ideal and what is real) gives rise to the first ens (God), and to all intelligible things contained in what is ideal, and to the distinction founded in what is sensible and present in what is real. John Philoponus writes: 'What then is one? It is a kind of substance, and IN SO FAR AS IT IS ONE, IS MADE A SUBSTANCE, as first the Pythagoreans and then Plato stated' (Ad Arist. Metaph., bk. 10, p. 41). Note how a thing is made a substance through the one, because the essence of a thing is in the apprehended idea, and it is in essence that substance is seen.

(95) John Philoponus, and Olimpiodorus (cf. Sturz).

(96) Metaph., bk. 1, c. 5.

(97) 'Aristotle accuses Empedocles of the absurd principle of positing friendship as the cause of a collective Sphere (in so far as it bestows unity) and of positing matter as a part of the Sphere (in so far as matter is unity, the intelligible form of things). If we grant him this, friendship is subject both as matter and as that which moves, although these differ totally in concept. If this is indeed the case, it is friendship whether it moves or whether it is matter. He should have told us therefore in what sense friendship is to be understood' (Ad Arist. Metaph., 12; also Ad Arist. Phys., bk. 2, c. 8).

(98) Ad Arist. De caelo, bk. 3, p. 144.

(99) Cf. Sturz, §10, for the passages of the ancient authors where Empedocles is understood as distinguishing between friendship and unity.

(100) Ad Arist. De Anima., bk. 3, q. 15; Themistius, Arist. De Anima, bk. 3.

(101) Eclog. Phys., bk. 1, p. 5.

(102) The various ways the Pythagoreans applied their unity are found in Theologumena Arithmeticae. They first referred it to the mind (p. 8, in Sturz).

(103) According to Hesychius.

(104) The passages of the ancients containing these words were collected by Meursius in Thesaur. Antiquit. Graecar., Gronovii, vol. 9.

(105) According to a passage in Simplicius, Empedocles' 'friendship' and 'discord' is the contrary of Anaxagoras' 'mind'. Ad Arist. Phys., bk. 3.

(106) Alexander of Aphrodisia writes: 'With the exception of the one, which he (Empedocles) calls God and Sphere, and which is made by friendship, all things come about, as he says, from discord which, he maintains, is outside God, that is, outside the Sphere, which he also calls ONE' (Ad Arist. Metaph., p. 96; cf. Sturz).

(107) John Philiponus, commenting on the productive action assigned by Empedocles to discord outside the Sphere (the intelligible, divine world), says: 'Empedocles posited discord as the cause of corruption. But discord evidently generates outside the Sphere. If there were no discord, all things would be one, and no elements would ever be generated. But when they come together in the Sphere, Empedocles saw discord as a kind of machine for dissolving the Sphere and generating the elements, and posited the Sphere in the middle' (Ad Arist. Metaph., bk. 3, p. 10; cf. Sturz).

(108) De Anima, bk. 1. Aristotle's objections always suppose (wrongly) that real elements are involved. One objection says that God could not know discord because God cannot have any discord within himself. But if we substitute ideal discord for real discord, the objection disappears. The idea of discord is not discord itself, nor anything evil, nor harmful to the divine essence.

(109) Simplicius, Ad Arist. Physic., bk. 1, p. 43; cf. Sturz.

(110) Plutarch, De Placit., bk. 1, c. 26.