From the book
Empedocles’ The Testimonia, Volume II
Empedocles of Acragas · Diotimos Editions · 2026
Browse this book’s lexicon →Orientation
At a Glance
- The wordThe image is a wall made of bricks and stones.
- In this workAt A43 Aristotle asks what kind of mixture is possible for thinkers who reason as Empedocles does.
- In this editionRetain the polemical ownership of the analogy.
- A place to readIntroduces the wall as the consequence of preserving roots in side-by-side small parts.
Meaning
The image is a wall made of bricks and stones. Its force lies in recognizable constituents persisting within an assembled whole. The comparison belongs to Aristotle’s prose criticism and must not be listed among Empedocles’ own poetic similes.
Use in the book
At A43 Aristotle asks what kind of mixture is possible for thinkers who reason as Empedocles does. His answer is composition like a wall: the constituents survive while minute parts are placed beside one another, and flesh must be constituted on that model. The analogy shifts the debate from whether roots persist to whether their persistence allows what Aristotle would recognize as genuine mixture.
The modern notes oppose this to the fixed ratio of bone. That is an important comparison but not a knockdown answer. A wall can have a definite proportion of materials and a structured arrangement; numerical specification alone does not tell us whether its constituents are thoroughly blended. The interpretative issue is the status of the resulting whole and its characteristic properties.
The wall image therefore has a double value. It is evidence for Aristotle’s reconstruction of the theory, and evidence for the rhetorical means by which a rival account was made to look inadequate. It is not an experiment reported by Empedocles or a neutral miniature of his system.
Places to read
- A 43 (polemical)Aristotle, De gen. et corr. B 7. Introduces the wall as the consequence of preserving roots in side-by-side small parts.
- Introduction (apparatus)Modern editor, “Bone is a ratio”. Uses the ratio account to reject the wall comparison; the claim that a wall has no ratio is not logically decisive.
Translation in this edition
Retain the polemical ownership of the analogy. A782’s ratio evidence can complicate the comparison without erasing A43 from the history of interpretation.