Empedocles’ The Testimonia, Volume II

The bell inside the ear

Aëtius

Empedocles: hearing comes about by the impact of breath upon the cartilaginous part, which he says hangs inside the ear, swinging like a bell and being struck.

Doxographic report, and the source of a famous image.

Compare A 86 § 9, where Theophrastus gives the same image and then objects to it: if we hear outside things by the bell, what do we hear the bell by? The notice here has kept the image and lost the objection, which is the usual direction of travel.

Bearing on Volume I. B 99, the "sprout of flesh."

20 χόνδρῳ in Stobaeus.

Smell comes in with the breath; and whether water has flavours in it

Aëtius

Empedocles: the smell is drawn in together with the breaths from the lung; at any rate, when the breathing becomes heavy, by reason of roughness one does not perceive it — as happens with those who have a catarrh.

Aristotle, On Sense and Sense-Objects

Taste is a kind of touch. Now the nature of water tends to be without flavour. But either water must have in itself the kinds of flavour, imperceptible because of their smallness, as Empedocles says, or …

Report, with a second witness on taste.

The head-cold is the evidence, and it is a good piece of evidence: blocked breathing and lost smell go together, and the inference from the one to the other is sound even though the mechanism is not. The Aristotle passage supplies what Theophrastus said Empedocles had left out — an account of taste — and it turns on the same principle as everything else, that what is too small to be perceived singly is present all the same.

Bearing on Volume I. Fills the gap Theophrastus noted at A 86 § 9.

19 κατά is the ps.-Plutarch reading: καὶ τήν in Stobaeus.