Note 540 — Chapter LXVII · THE DRAMA. — RHETORIC AND DIALECTICS. — THE SOPHISTS.
Reading edition
Some striking lines of Empedoklês are preserved by Sextus Empiricus, adv. Mathemat. vii, 115; to the effect that every individual man gets through his short life, with no more knowledge than is comprised in his own slender fraction of observation and experience: he struggles in vain to find out and explain the totality; but neither eye, nor ear, nor reason can assist him:—
Παῦρον δὲ ζωῆς ἀβίον μέρος ἀθρήσαντες, Ὠκύμοροι, καπνοῖο δίκην ἀρθέντες, ἀπέπταν Αὐτὸ μόνον πεισθέντες, ὅτῳ προσέκυρσεν ἕκαστος Πάντοσ᾽ ἐλαυνόμενοι. Τὸ δὲ οὖλον ἐπεύχεται εὑρεῖν Αὔτως· οὔτ᾽ ἐπιδερκτὰ τάδ᾽ ἀνδράσιν, οὔτ᾽ ἐπακουστὰ, Οὔτε νόῳ περιληπτά.