From the book
Empedocles’ The Testimonia, Volume II
Empedocles of Acragas · Diotimos Editions · 2026
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At a Glance
- The wordThe phrase means “in some one part”; mesē krasis is a middle or balanced blend.
- In this workTheophrastus says that those who possess the balanced blend in one part are wise or skilled in that part.
- In this editionThe Greek pairs speakers and craftsmen with hands and tongue in a way the translation resolves by sense.
- A place to readAssociates a balanced blend in a part with special skill in that part.
Meaning
The phrase means “in some one part”; mesē krasis is a middle or balanced blend. The report locates an advantageous constitution in a particular bodily part, contrasting this with a general account of the most intelligent persons.
Use in the book
Theophrastus says that those who possess the balanced blend in one part are wise or skilled in that part. He explains good speakers and good craftsmen by favourable mixtures in tongue and hands, extending the pattern to other faculties. The account therefore accommodates specialized excellence, not merely uniform degrees of general intelligence.
At §24 he attacks the move from a local mixture to the cause of an ability. A tongue and hands are instruments through which speaking and making are exercised; their local blood-blend alone does not establish why the exercise is intelligent or skilful. This dispute makes “local” a causal question as well as a spatial description. The report must not be modernized into a map of brain localization: the named sites are bodily organs associated with performances, and the critic's concern is the difference between enabling apparatus and explanatory cause.
Places to read
- A 86 §§ 10–11 (testimony)Theophrastus, On the Senses 11. Associates a balanced blend in a part with special skill in that part.
- A 86 § 24 (polemical)Theophrastus, On the Senses 24. Challenges the attribution of faculties to local blood-blending.
- A 30 (testimony)Ps.-Plutarch, Stromateis, in Eusebius P.E. I 8,10. Offers a later parallel relating superior local ability to the distribution of the governing part in blood.
Translation in this edition
The Greek pairs speakers and craftsmen with hands and tongue in a way the translation resolves by sense. Do not infer an otherwise unattested doctrine that speakers’ skill is in their hands merely from a mechanically parallel ordering.