 The relation between On Nature and Purifications is the subject of varied speculations. Once it was thought that the first was a scientific work and the latter a religious one. Since these categories were understood to be antithetical, there could be no relation at all between them; Empedocles had just written two incompatible poems. More recently, as the usefulness of such a rigid dichotomy seemed less plausible, commentators have seen the teaching about nature as continuous with Purifications. Both, after all, give a prominent place to Love and Strife. Nature, then, is ruled by the very same principles that are the key to understanding the drama of the ethical life, as Empedocles represents that. Understanding how nature works, one will want to side with Love and not Strife—especially, one will want to avoid the shedding of blood, that whereby we think and perceive, the very principle of conscious life. This sort of approach sees a complementarity between the natural philosophy and the religious narrative. However, in light of the Strasbourg manuscript, some have argued for a tighter unity. Martin and Primavesi, for instance, focus on a part of ensemble a which describes the moment when Strife dominates in the vortex and Love comes to be in its center. This description mirrors the same event described in B 35 (= D 75), except that, besides roots being united by Love, there are also persons of some sort being united in Love. According to the authors, these persons are the incarnated daimones of Purifications; in turn, these daimones, whose punishment through incarnation is coming to an end, are also particles of Love. The dissolution of composite beings under Strife, then, liberates these particles of Love from their cycle of incarnation and they unite in Love at its advent in the center of the whirl (Martin &amp; Primavesi 1999: 83–86, 90–95). Such interpretations might imply that there are not two poems but one. Nevertheless, the way textual support has been marshaled for these sorts of readings has not gone uncriticized (see Laks 2002, Bollack 2005). A third interpretation has recently been proposed, which views the differences in emphasis between the works as not necessarily establishing two separate texts, but two ‘levels’ of teaching: esoteric and exoteric (Curd 2005). On this reading, Empedocles is in fact addressing two audiences, one general, represented by the people of Acragas and the second-person plural, and one specialized group of intimates, represented by the appeals to Pausanias and the use of the second-person singular. The general audience is instructed in public lectures on the necessity of purifying themselves and the means to do so. By contrast, the inner circle receives a detailed explanation of the cosmos’ inner workings, a more rigorous account of Empedocles’ daemonology, and unique powers.