None of the remaining fragments of Empedokles are more remarkable than a few in which he deplores the impossibility of finding out any great or comprehensive truth, amidst the distraction and the sufferings of our short life. Every man took a different road, confiding only in his own accidental experience or particular impressions; but no man could obtain or communicate satisfaction about the whole.[140] [Footnote 140: Emp. Fr. v. 34, ed. Karst., p. 88. [Greek: pau=ron de\ zô/ês a)bi/ou me/ros a)thlê/santes ô)ku/moroi, ka/pnoio di/kên a)rthe/ntes, a)pe/ptan, au)to\ mo/non peisthe/ntes o(/tô| prose/kursen e(/kastos, pa/ntos' e)launo/menoi; to\ de\ ou)=lon e)peu/chetai eu(rei=n au)/tôs. ou)/t' e)piderkta\ ta/d' a)ndra/sin ou)/t' e)pakousta\ ou)/te no/ô| perilêpta/.]] [Side-note: Theory of Anaxagoras--denied generation and destruction--recognises only mixture and severance of pre-existing kinds of matter.] Anaxagoras of Klazomenæ, a friend of the Athenian Perikles, and contemporary of Empedokles, was a man of far simpler and less ambitious character: devoted to physical contemplation and geometry, without any of those mystical pretentions common among the Pythagoreans. His doctrines were set forth in prose, and in the Ionic dialect.[141] His theory, like all those of his age, was all-comprehensive in its purpose, starting from a supposed beginning, and shewing how heaven, earth, and the inhabitants of earth, had come into those appearances which were exhibited to sense. He agreed with Empedokles in departing from the point of view of Thales and other Ionic theorists, who had supposed one primordial matter, out of which, by various transformations, other sensible things were generated--and into which, when destroyed, they were again resolved. Like Empedokles, and like Parmenides previously, he declared that generation, understood in this sense, was a false and impossible notion: that no existing thing could have been generated, or could be destroyed, or could undergo real transformation into any other thing different from what it was.[142] Existing things were what they were, possessing their several inherent properties: there could be no generation except the putting together of these things in various compounds, nor any destruction except the breaking up of such compounds, nor any transformation except the substitution of one compound for another. [Footnote 141: Aristotel. Ethic. Eudem. i. 4, 5; Diogen. Laert. ii. 10.] [Footnote 142: Anaxagor. Fr. 22, p. 135, ed. Schaubach. [Greek: to\ de\ gi/nesthai kai\ a)po/llusthai ou)k o)rthô=s nomi/zousin oi( E(/llênes. Ou)de\n ga\r chrê=ma gi/netai, ou)de\ a)po/llutai, a)ll' a)p' e)o/ntôn chrêma/tôn summi/sgetai/ te kai\ diakri/netai; kai\ ou(/tôs a)\n o)rthô=s kaloi=en to/ te gi/nesthai summi/sgesthai kai\ to\ a)po/llusthai diakri/nesthai.]] [Side-note: Homoeomeries--small particles of diverse kinds of matter, all mixed together.]