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. For if we were to follow out the view of Empedocles, and
interpret it according to its meaning and not to its lisping
expression, we should find that friendship is the cause of good
things, and strife of bad. Therefore, if we said that Empedocles in
a sense both mentions, and is the first to mention, the bad and the
good as principles, we should perhaps be right, since the cause of all
goods is the good itself.
These thinkers, as we say, evidently grasped, and to this
extent, two of the causes which we distinguished in our work on
nature-the matter and the source of the movement-vaguely, however, and
with no clearness, but as untrained men behave in fights; for they
go round their opponents and often strike fine blows, but they do
not fight on scientific principles, and so too these thinkers do not
seem to know what they say; for it is evident that, as a rule, they
make no use of their causes except to a small extent. For Anaxagoras
uses reason as a deus ex machina for the making of the world, and when
he is at a loss to tell from what cause something necessarily is, then
he drags reason in, but in all other cases ascribes events to anything
rather than to reason. And Empedocles, though he uses the causes to
a greater extent than this, neither does so sufficiently nor attains
consistency in their use. At least, in many cases he makes love
segregate things, and strife aggregate them
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