Chapter 31

Empedocles affirms that Nature is nothing else but the mixture and separation of the elements; for thus he writes in the first book of his natural philosophy:--

Nature gives neither life nor death, Mutation makes us die or breathe. The elements first are mixed, then each Do part: this Nature is in mortal speech.

Anaxagoras is of the same opinion, that Nature is coalition and separation, that is, generation and corruption.