point handled in his 'Discussions on Philosophy,' p. 61, 2d edition.
5. The philosophy of Empedocles is, for the most part, rather physical than speculative. This preponderance of physics is indeed the general character of the pre-Socratic systems. Their metaphysical import is rather implied than expressed; and what appears on their surface is generally a mere farrago of crude and fanciful, and often unintelligible, descriptions and explanations of the phenomena of the natural world. Of such materials the poem of Empedocles, Περὶ φύσεως, was mainly composed, if we may judge from the fragments which have been handed down to us, and therefore we may be excused for passing over the greater part of its details without notice. There are, however, certain general considerations involved in the lucubrations of this philosopher which are not without speculative interest, and on which I now propose to touch, although I shall deal with them very shortly. These points are the relation in which the philosophy of Empedocles stands towards antecedent systems, and the relation in which it stands towards the Atomic theory, by which it was immediately succeeded.
6. Instead of supplanting the conception of Being by the conception of Becoming, as Heraclitus did, Empedocles adhered to the Eleatic principle, and attempted at the same time to reconcile with it the changes and operations of the universe. He saw that
