Of Nature.
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.