This is the actual fact: two kinds of motion. The Nous does not explain them. On the contrary, Love and Hatred; indeed we certainly see that these move as well as that the Nous moves.
Now the conception of the primal state undergoes a change: it is the most _blessed._ With Anaxagoras it was the chaos before the architectural work, the heap of stones as it were upon the building site.
Empedocles had conceived the thought of a tangential force originated by revolution and working against gravity ("de coelo," i., p. 284), Schopenhauer, "W. A. W.," ii. 390.
He considered the continuation of the circular movement according to Anaxagoras _impossible._ It would result in a _whirl, i.e.,_ the contrary of ordered motion.
If the particles were infinitely mixed, pell-mell, then one would be able to break asunder the bodies without any exertion of power, they would not cohere or hold together, they would be as dust.
The forces, which press the atoms against one another, and which give stability to the mass, Empedocles calls "Love." It is a molecular force, a constitutive force of the bodies.
2. Nothing prevented the complete segregation.
3. Our bodies would be dust-forms. How can motion exist, if there are not counter-motions in all bodies?
4. An ordered permanent circular motion impossible; only a whirl. He assumes the whirl itself to be an effect of the νεῑκος.--ἀπορροιαί. How do distant things operate on one another, sun upon earth? If everything were still in a whirl, that would be impossible. Therefore at least two moving powers: which must be inherent in Things.
5. Why infinite ὄντα? Transgression of experience. Anaxagoras meant the chemical atoms. Empedocles tried the assumption of four kinds of chemical atoms. He took the aggregate states to be essential, and heat to be co-ordinated. Therefore the aggregate states through repulsion and attraction; matter in four forms.
6. The periodical principle is necessary.
7. With the living beings Empedocles will also deal still on the same principle. Here also he denies purposiveness. His greatest deed. With Anaxagoras a dualism.
The symbolism of _sexual love._ Here as in the Platonic fable the longing after Oneness shows itself, and here, likewise, is shown that once a greater unity already existed; were this greater unity established, then this would again strive after a still greater one. The conviction of the unity of everything living guarantees that once there was an _immense Living Something,_ of which we are pieces; that is probably the Sphairos itself. He is the most blessed deity. Everything was connected only through love, therefore in the highest degree appropriate. Love has been torn to pieces and splintered by hatred, love has been divided into her elements and killed--bereft of life. In the whirl no living individuals originate. Eventually everything is segregated and now our period begins. (He opposes the Anaxagorean Primal Mixture by a Primal Discord.) Love, blind as she is, with furious haste again throws the elements one against another endeavouring to see whether she can bring them back to life again or not. Here and there she is successful. It continues. A presentiment originates in the living beings, that they are to strive after still higher unions than home and the primal state. Eros. It is a terrible crime to kill life, for thereby one works back to the Primal Discord. Some day everything will be again one _single life,_ the most blissful state.