From the Beginning to Plato

EMPEDOCLES 177
colours in the pores of fire. Eyes that have less fire (i.e. a smaller pupil and lens)
see better by day, and those with more by night. The particular point of the
lantern simile is to show the function of the membranes, which keep the water in
the eye from the fire, but allow the fire to penetrate through it.
In his explanation of the sense of hearing Empedocles supposed that external
sounds, which are emanations of air particles, enter the channel of the outer ear
(which he called a ‘sprig of flesh’, again linking plant and animal organs); if they
fit the pores there they then reverberate within as ‘in a trumpet bell’. Empedocles
accounted for smell in a similarly modern way as the entry of odorant particles
into receptive sockets on the surface of the organ—of the nostrils in the higher
animals, but extending over the whole body in lower forms of life. All skin
surfaces may be sensitive to odours, and so ‘all are apportioned breathing and
smelling’ (fr. 102).
The theory extended beyond that of simple perception, according to the lines
which probably followed on fragment 109, quoted above:
all things are fitted together and constructed out of these (the elements),
and by means of them they think and feel pleasure and pain.
(fr. 107)
Pleasure might occur as a result of the appropriate conjuncture of elemental
compounds within the body’s physical structure, but also as a response to
external stimuli that harmonize with this structure, or from the replenishment of
a deficiency by a complementary mixture of similar proportions. Conversely pain
was thought to be caused by ill-adjusted coalitions, the clash of contraries or
excessive replenishment. Examples of such painful experiences could be found
in nutrition when the food absorbed could not be assimilated to the body, and in
harmful perceptual encounters such as with a bright light or loud noise where the
intake overwhelms the organ. Asymmetry of pores in the senseorgan and the
effluences from the external object were also able to provide an explanation for
organs being unable to distinguish each other’s objects, for the eye sees colours
but not sounds, whereas sounds as effluences or ‘waves’ from a distant object are
symmetrical with the pores of the ear, and odours enter and fit with the nostrils.
Empedocles recognized that pores through the surface of the body in simpler
animal forms could be aware of and assimilate odours from distant objects in a way
analogous to humans taking them in through the nostrils, or hunting-dogs
sniffing spoors in the form of odorous effluences left by their prey, which enable
them to follow a trail. Skin and nostrils are not only the organs of smell, but are
also involved in respiration; this again is widespread, so that Empedocles was
ready to claim that ‘all things are apportioned breathing and smelling’ (fr. 102) in
a way similar or analogous to human respiration. One of the longest fragments
deals with this topic, and, as with the quotation on the eye, uses an engaging
simile: