If fire shall spare to do so in no part,
  Then heat will perish utterly and all,
  And out of nothing would the world be formed.
  For change in anything from out its bounds
  Means instant death of that which was before;
  And thus a somewhat must persist unharmed
  Amid the world, lest all return to naught,
  And, born from naught, abundance thrive anew.
  Now since indeed there are those surest bodies
  Which keep their nature evermore the same,
  Upon whose going out and coming in
  And changed order things their nature change,
  And all corporeal substances transformed,
  'Tis thine to know those primal bodies, then,
  Are not of fire. For 'twere of no avail
  Should some depart and go away, and some
  Be added new, and some be changed in order,
  If still all kept their nature of old heat:
  For whatsoever they created then
  Would still in any case be only fire.
  The truth, I fancy, this: bodies there are
  Whose clashings, motions, order, posture, shapes
  Produce the fire and which, by order changed,
  Do change the nature of the thing produced,
  And are thereafter nothing like to fire
  Nor whatso else has power to send its bodies
  With impact touching on the senses' touch.

    Again, to say that all things are but fire
  And no true thing in number of all things
  Exists but fire, as this same fellow says,
  Seems crazed folly. For the man himself
  Against the senses by the senses fights,
  And hews at that through which is all belief,
  Through which indeed unto himself is known
  The thing he calls the fire. For, though he thinks
  The senses truly can perceive the fire,
  He thinks they cannot as regards all else,
  Which still are palpably as clear to sense-
  To me a thought inept and crazy too.
  For whither shall we make appeal? for what
  More certain than our senses can there be
  Whereby to mark asunder error and truth?
  Besides, why rather do away with all,
  And wish to allow heat only, then deny
  The fire and still allow all else to be?-
  Alike the madness either way it seems.
  Thus whosoe'er have held the stuff of things
  To be but fire, and out of fire the sum,
  And whosoever have constituted air
  As first beginning of begotten things,
  And all whoever have held that of itself
  Water alone contrives things, or that earth
  Createth all and changes things anew
  To divers natures, mightily they seem
  A long way to have wandered from the truth.

    Add, too, whoever make the primal stuff
  Twofold, by joining air to fire, and earth
  To water; add who deem that things can grow
  Out of the four- fire, earth, and breath, and rain;
  As first Empedocles of Acragas,
  Whom that three-cornered isle of all the lands
  Bore on her coasts, around which flows and flows
  In mighty bend and bay the Ionic seas,
  Splashing the brine from off their gray-green waves.
  Here, billowing onward through the narrow straits,
  Swift ocean cuts her boundaries from the shores
  Of the Italic mainland. Here the waste
  Charybdis; and here Aetna rumbles threats
  To gather anew such furies of its flames
  As with its force anew to vomit fires,
  Belched from its throat, and skyward bear anew
  Its lightnings' flash. And though for much she seem
  The mighty and the wondrous isle to men,
  Most rich in all good things, and fortified
  With generous strength of heroes, she hath ne'er
  Possessed within her aught of more renown,
  Nor aught more holy, wonderful, and dear
  Than this true man. Nay, ever so far and pure
  The lofty music of his breast divine
  Lifts up its voice and tells of glories found,
  That scarce he seems of human stock create.

    Yet he and those forementioned (known to be
  So far beneath him, less than he in all),
  Though, as discoverers of much goodly truth,
  They gave, as 'twere from out of the heart's own shrine,
  Responses holier and soundlier based
  Than ever the Pythia pronounced for men
  From out the tripod and the Delphian laurel,
  Have still in matter of first-elements
  Made ruin of themselves, and, great men, great
  Indeed and heavy there for them the fall:
  First, because, banishing the void from things,
  They yet assign them motion, and allow
  Things soft and loosely textured to exist,
  As air, dew, fire, earth, animals, and grains,
  Without admixture of void amid their frame.
  Next, because, thinking there can be no end