38 definitions
The book's index
On Youth and Old Age, On Life and Death, On Breathing
27 concepts · 38 definitions
Breathing (n.) in Empedocles' picture is a girl playing with a bronze water-clock: hold your thumb on the tube and the air keeps the water out.
Breathing (n.) is lifting the lid of a brazier: coals kept covered die, coals uncovered and covered in quick alternation glow for a long time.
Breathing (n.) is no contingent accompaniment of life; it holds the keys of life and death.
Breathing (n.) quickens in heat to cool us — just when Democritus' theory would have us add fire to fire.
Death (n.) comes the two ways a fire goes out: extinguished from outside by violence, or exhausted from within by age.
Death (n.) in old age is painless: nothing violent is needed, and the soul's severance is felt not at all.
Death (n.) is the departure of the soul-atoms when the surrounding air's pressure finally wins.
Death (n.) is always due to some lack of heat.
Life (n.) is the keeping of a fire: the soul is set aglow in the heart, and death is that heat's destruction.
Life (n.) is the maintenance of a participation: generation is first sharing, through warmth, in the nourishing soul, and life is keeping that share.
Breath (n.) is what keeps the soul from being squeezed out of the body: each inhalation carries in soul-atoms to hold off the crushing air.
Breath (n.) of the last kind is always breathed out — so the first must have been breathed in.
Man (n.) is the only animal whose top points to the top of the universe.
Man (n.) stands most erect because his lung holds the purest and most plentiful blood: the hotter the life, the higher the soul.
Soul (n.) of a wasp or a plant is actually one and potentially many: cut it and each piece goes on living.
Soul (n.) and body are as the flute-player's hand and the flute: what uses an instrument must be distinct from it, even in place if possible.
Fire (n.) is always coming into being, rushing like a river, but too fast for the eye to see it flow.
Old age (n.) is a fire that has breathed most of itself away: a tiny feeble flame in the heart that the slightest movement puts out.
A Plant (n.) is an animal upside down: its roots are its mouth, so its 'upper' part always points into the ground.