From the four elements--acted upon by these two forces, abstractions or mythical personifications--Empedokles showed how the Kosmos was constructed. He supposed both forces to be perpetually operative, but not always with equal efficacy: sometimes the one was predominant, sometimes the other, sometimes there was equilibrium between them. Things accordingly pass through a perpetual and ever-renewed cycle. The complete preponderance of Love brings alternately all the elements into close and compact unity, Enmity being for the time eliminated. Presently the action of the latter recommences, and a period ensues in which Love and Enmity are simultaneously operative; until at length Enmity becomes the temporary master, and all union is for the time dissolved. But this condition of things does not last. Love again becomes active, so that partial and increasing combination of the elements is produced, and another period commences--the simultaneous action of the two forces, which ends in renewed empire of Love, compact union of the elements, and temporary exclusion of Enmity.[111] [Footnote 111: Zeller, Philos. der Griech., vol. i. p. 525-528, ed. 2nd.] [Side-note: Empedoklean predestined cycle of things--complete empire of Love--Sphærus--Empire of Enmity--disengagement or separation of the elements--astronomy and meteorology.] This is the Empedoklean cycle of things,[112] divine or predestined, without beginning or end: perpetual substitution of new for old compounds--constancy only in the general principle of combination and dissolution. The Kosmos which Empedokles undertakes to explain, takes its commencement from the period of complete empire of Love, or compact and undisturbed union of all the elements. This he conceives and divinises under the name of Sphærus--as One sphere, harmonious, uniform, and universal, having no motion, admitting no parts or separate existences within it, exhibiting no one of the four elements distinctly, "instabilis tellus, innabilis unda"--a sort of chaos.[113] At the time prescribed by Fate or Necessity, the action of Enmity recommenced, penetrating gradually through the interior of Sphærus, "agitating the members of the God one after another,"[114] disjoining the parts from each other, and distending the compact ball into a vast porous mass. This mass, under the simultaneous and conflicting influences of Love and Enmity, became distributed partly into homogeneous portions, where each of the four elements was accumulated by itself--partly into compounds or individual substances, where two or more elements were found in conjunction. Like had an appetite for Like--Air for Air, Fire for Fire, and so forth: and a farther extension of this appetite brought about the mixture of different elements in harmonious compounds. First, the Air disengaged itself, and occupied a position surrounding the central mass of Earth and Water: next, the Fire also broke forth, and placed itself externally