If we turn to the religious teaching of the _Purifications_, we find that everything turns on the doctrine of transmigration. On the general significance of this enough has been said above (§ 42); the details given by Empedokles are peculiar. According to a decree of Necessity, “daemons” who have sinned are forced to wander from their home in heaven for three times ten thousand seasons (fr. 115). He himself is such an exiled divinity, and has fallen from his high estate because he put his trust in raving Strife. The four elements toss him from one to the other with loathing; and so he has not only been a human being and a plant, but even a fish. The only way to purify oneself from the taint of original sin was by the cultivation of ceremonial holiness, by purifications, and abstinence from animal flesh. For the animals are our kinsmen (fr. 137), and it is parricide to lay hands on them. In all this there are, no doubt, certain points of contact with the cosmology. We have the “mighty oath” (fr. 115; cf. fr. 30), the four elements, Hate as the source of original sin, and Kypris as queen in the Golden Age (fr. 128). But these points are neither fundamental nor of great importance. And it cannot be denied that there are really contradictions between the two poems. That, however, is just what we should expect to find. All through this period, there seems to have been a gulf between men’s religious beliefs, if they had any, and their cosmological views. The few points of contact which we have mentioned may have been sufficient to hide this from Empedokles himself. CHAPTER VI ANAXAGORAS OF KLAZOMENAI [Sidenote: Date.] 120. All that Apollodoros tells us with regard to the date of Anaxagoras seems to rest upon the authority of Demetrios Phalereus, who said of him, in the _Register of Archons_, that he began to study philosophy, at the age of twenty, in the archonship of Kallias or Kalliades at Athens (480-79 B.C.).[647] This date was probably derived from a calculation based upon the philosopher’s age at the time of his trial, which Demetrios had every opportunity of learning from sources no longer extant. Apollodoros inferred that Anaxagoras was born in Ol. LXX. (500-496 B.C.), and he adds that he died at the age of seventy-two in Ol. LXXXVIII. 1 (428-27 B.C.).[648] He doubtless thought it natural that he should not survive Perikles, and still more natural that he should die the year Plato was born.[649] We have a further statement, of doubtful origin, but probably due to Demetrios also, that Anaxagoras lived at Athens for thirty years. This may be a genuine tradition;[650] and if so, we get from about 462 to 432 B.C. as the time he lived there. Footnote 647: