Episode 018 - All Things Are Not Made of Earth, Air, Fire, and Water
Date: 05/16/20
Link: https://www.epicureanfriends.com/thread/1552-episode-eighteen-all-things-are-not-made-of-earth-air-fire-and-water/
Summary
Section titled “Summary”Martin reads Daniel Brown’s passage introducing Empedocles of Agrigentum — praised with near-hyperbolic admiration as “scarce-born of human race but from the gods” for his discoveries — followed immediately by the critique: the four-element theorists err because they (1) deny void while presupposing motion, (2) allow infinite divisibility with no least particle, and (3) use soft and mortal seeds as first principles. Charles then reads the second passage, in which Lucretius argues that even four elements cannot account for variety unless the elements can change into one another, at which point they are no longer first principles; and closes with the celebrated letter-word-verse analogy: just as the same letters in different arrangements produce entirely different words, the same atoms arranged and combined differently produce the entire variety of nature.
Discussion opens with the observation that Lucretius’s depiction of Empedocles — contrasted sharply with the dismissal of Heraclitus as a deliberate obscurantist — suggests that honest error deserves respectful correction while intentional mystification deserves blunt denunciation. The panelists discuss Empedocles’s two active principles, Love and Strife, examining the Stanford Encyclopedia article Charles reads aloud: these principles come strikingly close to pleasure and pain, except that Empedocles externalizes them as cosmic forces rather than recognizing them as feelings arising from within bodies. The “celestial fire” or “heavenly fire” language in some translations prompts a digression on whether Empedocles meant a divine or merely astronomical fire, and whether that distinction was used as an escape hatch to avoid the force of Lucretius’s objection.
The episode closes with Cassius drawing out the strategic lesson in Lucretius’s method: when someone makes a wrong inference from correct observations (plants grow upward; rain and sun nourish life), the right move is to acknowledge what is correct and then provide a better model that accounts for all observations rather than just some. The letter-word-verse analogy is the culminating example of this: it gives the listener a concrete familiar model — the letters of the alphabet — for how a small number of basic constituents in varied arrangements can produce the unlimited variety of things. Charles and Elaine depart for Mother’s Day.
Transcript
Section titled “Transcript”Cassius: Welcome to Episode 18 of Lucretius Today. I’m your host, Cassius, and together with my panelists from the EpicureanFriends.com Forum, we’ll walk you through the six books of Lucretius’ poem and discuss how Epicurean philosophy can apply to you today. Be aware that none of us are professional philosophers and everyone here is a self-taught Epicurean. We encourage you to study Epicurus for yourself, and we suggest the best place to start is the book Epicurus and His Philosophy by Canadian professor Norman DeWitt. Before we start with today’s episode, let me remind you of our three ground rules. First, our aim is to go back to the original text to bring you an accurate presentation of classical Epicurean philosophy as the ancient Epicureans understood it — not simply repeat for you what passes for conventional wisdom about Epicurus today. Second, we won’t be talking about Epicurus from the point of view of modern political perspectives. Epicurus must be understood on his own and not in terms of competitive schools which may seem similar to Epicurus but are fundamentally different and incompatible, such as Stoicism, Humanism, Buddhism, Taoism, Atheism, and Marxism. Third, we’ll be approaching Epicurus exactly as he intended — with the goal of understanding the fundamental nature of the universe as the essential base of Epicurean philosophy. From this perspective, you’ll see that Epicurus taught neither the pursuit of luxury nor the pursuit of simple living, but the pursuit of pleasure, using feeling as the guide to life and not supernatural gods, idealism, or virtue ethics. As important as anything else, Epicurus taught that there is no life after death, and that any happiness we will ever have must come in this life, which is why it is so important not to waste time in confusion. Remember that our podcast homepage is LucretiusToday.com, where you can download a free copy of the versions of the poem we’re reading, and our home for discussion of Lucretius and all other aspects of Epicurean philosophy is EpicureanFriends.com. Now for today — in this Episode 18 — we’ll be discussing how just as things are not formed of one single element such as fire, divine or otherwise, all things are also not simply formed from the four classical elements of earth, air, fire, and water. Now let’s join the discussion with Martin reading today’s text.
Martin: And so do those who, without the first elements of things, and to produce all beings, join the air to fire, the earth to water; or believe that from all four, all beings are produced in spring, from air and water, earth and fire. The chief of these we rank Empedocles of Agrigantum, born in Sicily, the island famed for its three promontories, whose sight the surrounding sea flows all around with mighty windings, from whose coast the sea by a narrow frith divides the bounds of Italy. Here is fierce Charybdis, here Etna roars and threatens loud to suck in flames of vengeance with greater force to o’belch them out again, burst from his jaws and throw the flashing fire high as the sky. This island, though renowned by men for many things and worth their sight, rich in the best advantages of life, by mighty men defended, yet produced nothing more glorious than this one great man, nothing more venerable, admired, and dear. Besides his worth, that from his soul divine flow sweetly so clearly proves, and so explains the noble secrets he has found, he seems scarce-born of human race but from the gods.
Yet he, with others of inferior note we named before, remarkably by great degrees and much below him — though these have succeeded well in their search, and many things have found as if inspired, and have pronounced the oracles from the most close recesses of their souls much more divine and founded more on reasons than the Pythian sacred prophetess from a tripod or from Apollo’s laurel ever spoke — yet they have made sad havoc where they search into the principles of things, and fail, with this great man’s mistakes, together with him.
And first, because denying there is void in bodies, they admit of motion and allow that things are soft or rare, as the air, the sun, the fire, the earth, the creatures, fruits, and yet mix no empty space in the context of bodies that are formed. And then they said no bounds to bodies being divided, nor will admit an end to blows that break their frame, nor will they grant that such a thing as least is found in bodies, when we plainly see that every being has a point that utmost lies and obvious to our sense, which is the least of all, and then conclude that utmost point is that same least in things too small to be discovered by the sight. Besides, these men make their principles of things consist in soft seeds — what we see are born and altogether mortal to their frame. If so, the whole of things must have returned to nothing, and we again from nothing restored — how distant both from truths you have heard before! And then such seeds are many times at war among themselves, and poison to each other, and so will perish in their clashes — in a tempest we observe the thunder, and the showers and wind disperse.
Charles: Lastly, if all things from four elements are formed, and into them are finally dissolved, why should they rather the first principles of things be called, than things the principles of them? For they are produced alternately, are ever changing their form and their whole nature mutually into each other. But if by chance you think the body of the fire and earth is joined, that air is joined to water, and this united, each element preserves its nature still entire — nothing from seeds like these could have been formed, not men, nor things inanimate as trees. For every element in this various heap of matter, ever changing, would display its proper nature still. You’d see air mixed with earth, and fire and water joined. But the first principles, once things are formed, should be in nature close and undiscerned, that nothing might appear which should oppose or jar, and thus prevent the compound body from being uniform, and make it consist of parts dissimilar, confused, and void.
Besides, philosophers like these derive their transmutation from celestial fire, and first they make this fire change to air; from air is water formed, the earth from water; and then again, from earth these elements return: first water, then the air, then last the fire. Nor do these constant changes ever cease among themselves, but still proceed from heaven to earth, from earth to stars that light the world. But the first seeds of things by no means ought to be thus disposed, for something immutable must needs remain, lest things should utterly to nothing be reduced. Therefore whatsoever suffers change by passing over the bounds of its first nature dies, and is no more what it first was. Those elements therefore, which as we said above admit of change, must needs consist of other seeds which can never change at all, lest things should utterly to nothing be reduced. Then rather say there are some certain principles in nature which are the seeds of fire. Suppose, and some of these being taken away, or else by adding more, by changing of their order or their motion, they compose the air — and so all other beings may be produced by changes such as these.
But you say that common fact does clearly show that all things grow and rise into the air and are supported by the earth, and unless the season at a happy time indulges rain and shakes the trees with driving showers, unless the sun on his part cherishes and gives his heat — nor fruits, nor trees, nor creatures, could increase. It is true, but these are not first seeds; and we, likewise, unless dry food and kindly juice preserve our bodies, they must perish, and every spark of life out of our nerves and bones must be extinct. We are upheld, no doubt, and nourished by certain means, and other things are stayed by others, for many common principles of many things are mixed in each, and therefore the various kinds of things we find are supported in a different matter. But yet it much concerns with what, and in what order, these first seeds unite, in what motion they give and take among themselves — for the same seeds compose the air, the earth, the sea, rivers, and the sun; the same compose the creatures, fruits, and trees. They differ only as they are moved by others, and as their mixture differs in themselves.
So in these lines of mine the many letters you see are common to the make and form of many words, and yet you must confess the verses and the words are much unlike in sense and sound — such is the force of letters by change of order only. But the first seeds of things being more, must needs admit of changes more different, from whence proceeds that great variety of things we see produced.
Cassius: Thanks, Charles. It’s interesting to me to think: so these days — I’m not going to say nobody thinks that everything is made from the four elements, because there’s probably somebody out there who does — but you know, most people accept that there are elementary particles, or at least atoms. They accept elements and compounds and molecules and so on. So it might sound funny to people now: why would you ever think that air could turn into fire, or that you have to combine those things to make stuff? Of course, there are things that are just as far out today that people believe that are not described by science. But this is what he was faced with, so he had to make a real specific argument.
Elaine: When you say that, I hear echoes of what we were discussing before we started today — the issue that when you’ve got people who are so confused by conflicting claims, or claims that you think are wrong, you’ve got to find a way to make contact with them and give them a basis for analyzing the true from the false.
Cassius: Yes. There’s nothing really more basic than the issue of what makes up everything. Is it God or spirit that forms every material thing we see? Or how do these material things that we see come into being, and what are they made of? And unless you start with the process of digging to the very foundation of it, then it’s really hard to make any progress in talking to somebody. If they think that everything is mystical — or everything is, like I said earlier, spirit — then you’re so far apart that you have no grounds even to communicate.
Elaine: Right. So the other thing that strikes me is — I always think it’s important to remember that this is a poem. So the first couple of sections here, in the Daniel Brown — those are very poetic. And we’ve commented before that the beginning of the poem was quite poetic and kind of flowery even, had a lot of metaphor in it. And then that seemed to subside. And then here we have this back again — some beautiful poetic language, metaphorical language. I think that’s worth taking note of. But what he’s doing in this first couple of sections — he’s contrasting Empedocles with the people who think that everything can come from fire, that at least he had four elements, right? That was a little bit better, and he praises him. Like: “Dude, you almost got there, but then you kind of took a detour.” Oops.
Cassius: I liked that. That’s the whole section you’re talking about there — about however you pronounce his name — Empedocles of Agrigantum. All of that material about the island having three promontories and the coast and the sea and the dividing waters — all of that’s not necessary to the continuity of the discussion of the atoms, but it really makes everything more interesting.
Cassius: Well, what does it do? It provides feeling, you know? He admires this person for having gotten as far as he got. And so he uses some hyperbole — “his soul divine flows sweetly,” “scarce-born of human race but from the gods” — the hyperbole. But it’s not a dry text, right? It’s a poem. And so this is how he’s expressing the feelings that he has about this person. It’s worth noticing.
Elaine: So there is one strange phrase: “Etna roars and threatens loud to suck in flames of vengeance” — what does that refer to?
Cassius: Etna — let’s see. Is there a nymph? Etna’s the mountain, right? It’s a mountain. It’s a volcano.
Elaine: Yeah. But — oh okay, so they’re not talking about the nymph. That passage made me think of Scylla and Charybdis — because it’s Charybdis. But the mountain comes from the nymph. Right — or the name of it. Yeah. But that’s got to be the mountain, that’s right. The second part, after it — that makes sense, because it emits. But volcanoes don’t suck in flames, so that’s weird.
Cassius: Let’s see. Well, I think — Rouse says: “rumblings of Aetna threaten anew to gather up such fury of flames as to flame them forth, to belch them out.” I think he’s just saying that Aetna as a volcano is threatening to accumulate within itself the flames before it spews them out.
Elaine: I mean, Charybdis is like a whirlpool, so I don’t think he’s talking about the same thing.
Cassius: Yeah, but the other translations are better than this first one. Okay — is it just a scenic note? Yeah, “gather” is the one that the other two on this page use, so that makes sense. Maybe he’s listing these things because they’re examples of earth, fire, and air and water. Yeah. Yeah. So he’s just saying that’s how Empedocles came up with his division — because he had so many obvious examples of it in front of him.
Cassius: Yeah. And so this is something — when you are faced with a wild claim, we’ll say, by someone who is otherwise maybe admirable or reputable — it’s a better strategy to admit what they’ve done well and not just say they were completely ridiculous.
Elaine: Yeah. To admit that they do have important things to say, and yet that they have erred in the way they concluded from them. And that the way to get to the truth is to start back from the beginning — start back at their premises and their beginning points — and unwind it from the start.
Cassius: Yeah. And Epicurus — or Lucretius, as we’re going through here — after he makes that statement about Empedocles and says that they were great and yet in first principles of things they came to grief and had a heavy fall because of that error — he starts out by saying: first, their error is they take away the void in things and yet they suppose movement and leave things soft, but no mingling of void. So they’re insisting on matter while refusing to acknowledge void — and void is necessary for understanding how things work. And then the second item: because they hold there is no limit at all to the cutting of body. So the first item is the absence of void — an error. The second item is the absence of a least body; saying divisibility goes on infinitely — that’s their second error. And Lucretius has already knocked that down so he doesn’t have to do that again.
Cassius: In line 744, Bailey says: “and that when we see that there is that extreme point in each thing which is seen to be the least to our senses” — so you can infer from this that the extreme point in things which you cannot see is the least in them. So he’s talking about looking at something you can see and then inferring from what you can see something about that which you cannot see.
Elaine: Yeah. This is an example of the kind of thing — like we were talking about before — the difference between abstract reasoning that’s completely detached from observation and practical reasoning that is linked to observation. Epicurus does make inferences.
Cassius: I think the word is “analogy” as well. You analogize.
Elaine: Right — analogy, yeah. You analogize from those things that you are familiar with and use that as the basis for your — if you want to call it speculation — your speculation about how things do work. And as always, if you gain access to a method of direct observation, then that supersedes any kind of analogy that you’ve done as your working model.
Cassius: So as I’m looking at his analysis here — he’s talked about the error of not having void, the error of there not being a least-sized body. And then I see that he goes on to start talking about: “again, if from four things all are created and are again dissolved.” So he then attacks the issue of — even if you start with four different starting points, you still aren’t going to get to where you need to be. Yeah.
Elaine: And yeah, this — if you’ve got no void, if you think fire is a seed of everything and you have no void in it, it would have to retain its initial characteristics. I mean, you would have to be seeing the fire in things. There’s no void. I don’t know if that comes across clearly, but that’s what I think he’s saying.
Cassius: I think that’s what he’s part of what he’s saying. I think that’s where he’s going. He’s emphasizing that unless you come up with some other mechanism — like the void and like other types of atoms — you’re just going to be left with fire no matter how much fire you pile onto the initial piece of fire. It’s all going to stay fire.
Cassius: The paragraph I see around line 782 then reminds me of what you learn in elementary school — the water cycle — where water turns to moisture or vapor and goes up to the clouds and then rains again, in an infinite cycle of changing the state of water. What am I thinking about? Is there another name for the cycle that changes the state of water?
Elaine: It is, yeah. I know exactly what you’re talking about, yep. I remember those illustrations from elementary science books. Yeah.
Cassius: Yeah. The hydrologic cycle. Okay. So here he’s saying that these other philosophers basically had a fire cycle — it looks like — that they trace it back to heaven’s fires. Fire first turns itself into breezes of the sky, and then rain, and then of rain creates earth, and then all things back again to the earth, and then apparently back to heaven again. So it’s kind of a fire cycle, it looks like. So this is really going back to fire being the primary element. And then he says: “but first beginnings ought in no way to do this, because you have to have something unchangeable.”
Elaine: Yeah. I think — you know — people today would not think that out of rain, earth is created. Although I will say there are minerals in rain, so I don’t want anybody to hear me say that and think, “Well, that’s stupid.” So the rain is not just water; it has other things in it. But we’re not thinking that H2O turns into dirt anymore. But I guess they did at the time.
Cassius: I’m kind of curious about how Daniel Brown in 1743 says “celestial fire.” Well — versus “heaven.” Munro doesn’t quite say it. When Bailey says “heaven and heaven’s fires,” there’s a separate quality that can bridge the gap and they resort to the divine. Are you saying — I was kind of wondering if I’m reading this right — but the “heavenly fire” or “celestial fire” was a different kind of fire from the fire we’re thinking of?
Elaine: Yeah, it’s not real clear to me. To have the qualities to transmute itself into different properties — I’m sure maybe Empedocles, or somebody else among the Eleatics, was confronted with that. So maybe it was a common defense to say it was “heavenly.”
Cassius: I guess even in modern English we have that ambiguity in the word “heaven.” It could be religiously slanted — or people do talk about the stars being “the heavens.” Right. So it’s not always clear whether you have that religious implication or not.
Elaine: I think we would actually have to know more about — I can’t say that word. Say it for me, Cassius.
Cassius: I say Empedocles, but as usual I could be totally butchering it.
Elaine: I think I was trying to switch, like I have a moment of switching consonants or something. Okay, so — Empedocles — I think we would have to maybe know more about his ideas of whether he thought of “celestial fire” or “heavenly fire” as different from the four elements, if that’s a different kind of fire.
Cassius: So it’s an interesting question — doesn’t change the outcome, but it is interesting. Because people will try to get out of stuff by saying, “Well, that’s special fire — it can do special things.”
Cassius: I guess we still have the paragraph around line 803 that says: “but you’ll say in response to me that it’s obvious that everything grows and rises up into the air and is supported by the earth.” So it must have been sort of the common understanding to analogize the fact that because trees and plants grow upward, everything is really reaching for the heavens. Okay.
Charles: I’m on the Stanford article about him. This is fascinating — he was fifth century BC, and it said that he had a philosophical program that had a four-part theory of roots. He pioneered it: air, water, earth, and fire — along with two active principles of Love and Strife. What does that make you think of?
Elaine: Yeah, it makes me think of pleasure and pain. But he saw that as like… spirits. Yeah — pleasure and pain as a supernatural kind of thing. Like a guiding force.
Cassius: Yeah, how interesting is that? Pretty reminiscent of Hesiod.
Elaine: I was thinking about that earlier, but it wouldn’t have made sense for Lucretius to bring it up. It wouldn’t be the right time.
Cassius: Yeah. I was reading in here that he thought there was like a heavenly fire versus an earthly fire, so it was just one eternal root. So I think that’s probably just an issue with the translations sort of accidentally suggesting something that Lucretius was not saying.
Charles: It says right here: “Empedocles held that the four elements — water, air, earth, and fire — were those unchangeable fundamental realities which were themselves transfigured into successive worlds by the powers of Love and Strife.” It also says here in parentheses that Heraclitus “explicated the logos or the unity of opposites.”
Cassius: It’s interesting how he would think that Love and Strife — which would usually typically correspond to pleasure and pain — were external to us, not feelings that came out of our bodies or experience within our bodies.
Charles: There’s a little section talking about the cosmic cycle there and the relations of Love and Strife. This is kind of worth reading about, because these would have been some of the things that Epicurus was arguing against. Empedocles was a pretty famous pre-Socratic.
Elaine: Well, that’s cool, because I had never heard of him before, so I like to find that out.
Cassius: I’ve heard of him, but I don’t know a whole lot about him. I guess the implication of Love and Strife as forces shaping these elements is kind of a providential outlook, and Epicurus is going to be wanting to swat that away by emphasizing that everything happens by combination of the atoms through their movement and arrangement.
Elaine: Right — and that love is a feeling, not just an existing force.
Cassius: Yeah — not some outside force that exists in the universe as if it were God. “God is love,” you know?
Charles: God is love. Apparently, he talks about particles of love. In the Stanford article it says, “The dissolution of composite beings under Strife then liberates these particles of Love from their cycle of incarnation, and they unite in Love at its advent in the center of the world.”
Cassius: So there you’ve got the issue of the universe having a center as well, which is, in my mind, hard to divide away from, again, a religious, mythological representation of the universe. If there is a center, then surely there’s something sort of mystically divine about that center.
Elaine: Well, I don’t know that I would put those two things together.
Cassius: Yeah — maybe divinely created. Well, you wouldn’t have to conclude that. I don’t think that’s a necessary conclusion. I’d be careful. We’ve discussed that before, I think, and I agree with you. It is not a necessary conclusion of there being a center. But it goes back to the issue of: is the earth the only place in the universe that has life on it? To me, in my experience, people who take the position that there’s no place in the universe that has life but earth are going to be impelled towards the conclusion that there’s something special about the earth — and something special about the earth usually gets translated into God’s blessing of the earth.
Elaine: Again, it’s not necessary to conclude that.
Cassius: Right. Yeah. There’s a big leap in there. Yeah. There are lots of leaps in there. Well, why don’t we think of some summary thoughts on today? Did we go over the last passage?
Cassius: So that’s where people who are believing this four-elements thing would say — and here I’m reading from Bailey: “but you say, the facts show clearly that all things are nourished and grow from the earth up into the breezes of the sky, and unless the season at a propitious time fosters them with rain so that the trees rock beneath the outpouring of the storm clouds, and the sun for its part cherishes them and bestows its heat on them — crops, trees, living creatures, none could grow.” So they’re using observations to try to argue for these elements.
Cassius: And so Lucretius says: yes, in truth, unless we were nurtured by dry food and soft moisture, we should lose our flesh and all the life would be loosened from our sinews and bones. For beyond all doubt, we are nurtured and nourished upon things determined, and other things, each in their turn, on things determined. And this is where he really brings it home — like: “okay, you’re observing, your observations are right — but keep going.” So it’s because many first beginnings, common in many ways to many things, are mingled among things, so that diverse things are nourished on diverse foods. “For the same build up sky, sea, earth, river, sun; the same too crops, trees, living creatures — but only when mingled with different things and moving in different ways.” And then he gets to the letters and the words and the verses.
Cassius: So I think these last paragraphs are critical — not only because this is talking about how you build up reality from these elementary particles, but also this is what you do when somebody is making a wrong conclusion from observations. You need to notice what they’re saying that’s correct and say, “Yeah, yeah, that’s definitely true” — and this is why — then give them the more accurate explanation. An analogy that they can understand. Rather than their analogy that “well, everything grows towards the sky,” you give them the other analogy: “well, yes, everything does appear to grow to the sky, but also think about how letters form words and form sentences, and it’s the arrangement of the letters that lets everything come into being. Just like the arrangement of atoms allows everything to come into being in outside reality.” And this model of the elementary particles fits all of the observations — not just some of them.
Elaine: Right. You know, maybe that last sentence is worth reading very slowly.
Cassius: “Scattered in my verses, you see many letters common to many words, and yet you must necessarily grant that verses and words are unlike both in sense and in the ring of their sound. So great is the power of letters by a mere change of order.” That reminds me of “so great is the power of religion that inspired evil.” “But the first beginnings of things can bring more means to bear, by which all diverse things can be created.” So it’s not just the arrangement of a small number of atoms — but it looks like he’s emphasizing that it’s both the arrangement and the diversity of the atoms themselves.
Cassius: Right. So he has recognized that just four things is not going to cut it. Four things is better than one, but it’s still not going to get you to where you need to be. Yeah.
Cassius: Well, it looks like Charles has left us for Mother’s Day, so we probably ought to come to a conclusion today ourselves.
Elaine: Yeah, I’m about to do a FaceTime with family several states apart. Okay.
Cassius: All right. Anything else for today, Elaine?
Elaine: I think this whole section is a great example of how you approach problematic interpretations of reality — not just what was around in Epicurus’s time, but we can use these same kinds of ways to help people understand science better.
Cassius: The observation that comes to mind when you say that is: he was very blunt in criticizing Heraclitus — essentially a fool for saying that everything comes from fire. But I think there’s an interesting contrast in the way he’s treating Empedocles here. He’s much more deferential to him and has good things to say about him, but he still emphasizes that he made a terrible mistake in thinking that there were only four elements and that there’s no such thing as void and that everything can be infinitely divisible. But he’s much more respectful, it seems like, of Empedocles than he is of Heraclitus. And maybe it goes back to the observation he made that Heraclitus specialized in obscuring things and almost intentionally being incomprehensible in what he said as he appealed to fools. He apparently does not think that Empedocles had the same fault. He apparently thinks that Empedocles was wrong — but not that Empedocles was intentionally deceptive or intentionally hiding things, the way Heraclitus seemed to be.
Elaine: Yeah, even today — the more difficult the science, maybe the more math you would need to understand the physics, the more sophisticated it becomes — the less you would think somebody was just intentionally being ridiculous if they drew incorrect conclusions from it. Some things do require a bigger working memory, or more education, to understand. But you can still talk to people who have drawn those kinds of conclusions, if they’re not just bound and determined to believe things that conflict with observations — then you can find ways to explain observations to them.
Cassius: Right. He says about Empedocles that “the songs of his godlike heart lift up their voice and set forth his glorious discoveries, so that he seems scarce-born of human stock” — which is quite different than calling Heraclitus “a doting old fool.”
Elaine: Yes, definitely. I am going to have to cut out.
Cassius: Okay. Martin? Anything else?
Martin: No. Nothing else.
Cassius: Okay. Well, thanks everybody for today. We’ll do it again very soon. Okay.