On the Interpretation of Empedocles: A Dissertation Submitted to the Faculty of the Graduate School of Arts and Literature in Candidacy for the Degree ... (Department of Greek) (Classic Reprint) - Tapa blanda

Excerpt from On the Interpretation of Empedocles: A Dissertation Submitted to the Faculty of the Graduate School of Arts and Literature in Candidacy for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy, (Department of Greek)

To these difliculties of interpretation are added, in the case of Empedo cles, the especial problems set by the employment of highly poetic and imaginative imagery which nearly always obscures the meaning. The use of this imagery constitutes indeed a presumption that the thought is not over precise. Thought does not reach clear and accurate conceptions before command of language has been obtained, and unless the poet deliber ately chose to conceal his thought, his ideas must be regarded as subject to the same limitations as his diction. It is conceivable that Empedocles should at times choose picturesque imagery to capture the ears of his hearers. Were his thought precise and abstract, however, he would surely, like Parmenides, often lapse into more logical modes of expression. We may well believe that much which seems to us consciously figurative was by the poet meant as statement of fact. It would be strange indeed if the mythological mode of conceiving the universe were completely abandoned from the very inception of philosophic thinking.

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