=The New Conception of the Unchanging of the Pluralists――The Element.= But there must be a permanence in order that there be change. This can only be conceived by assuming that there are many original units that in themselves do not change. The mass of the world is ever the same; there is no new creation. Being consists in many elements, and not in a single block. So to Empedocles in particular is accredited the priority of forming the conception of the element, which has occupied an important place in science. The element is conceived by the Pluralists as unoriginated, imperishable, and unchanging. It has all the qualities that Parmenides attributed to his single Being, only the elements may change their place and suffer mechanical division. The Pluralists thus make the Eleatic conception useful in the explanation of nature. =The Introduction of the Conception of the Efficient Cause.= The Eleatics had detached the quality of motion from Being. The Pluralists, in reintroducing it, were obliged to make it a separate force in order to get movement into their universe. The elements are changeless. How can they move? They cannot move themselves. They are moved from without. Here in Empedocles is made a differentiation of great importance――the concept of the moving or efficient cause. However, this does not appear in this early time in conceptual but in mythical-poetic and undefined form. With this differentiated efficient cause, can Pluralism be considered to be hylozoism? Authorities differ. Certainly this new concept shows the beginning of the breaking up of hylozoism and the beginning of the formation of a mechanistic conception of the universe. But probably the Pluralists were as much hylozoists as their predecessors, the monists. Their efficient causes are material like the elements, and they are poetically and indefinitely described. They are in every case conceived as the material which has a lively or an originating motion. We must keep in mind that all the Cosmologists except the Eleatics believed movement to be life. =Summary of Similarities and Differences in the Theories of the Reconcilers.= The general common characteristics of the theories of the Reconcilers:―― 1. A plurality of the elements. 2. An efficient cause which explains the shifting of the elements in causing the origin, growth, and decay of the world of nature. The general differences between the theories of the Reconcilers:―― 1. In the number and quality of the elements. 2. In the number and quality of the causes.