HERAKLEITOS OF EPHESOS
[Sidenote: Life of Herakleitos.]
63. Herakleitos of Ephesos, son of Blyson, is said to have “flourished”
in Ol. LXIX. (504/3-501/0 B.C.);[319] that is to say, just in the middle
of the reign of Dareios, with whom several traditions connected
him.[320] We shall see that Parmenides was assigned to the same
Olympiad, though for another reason (§ 84). It is more important,
however, for our purpose to notice that, while Herakleitos refers to
Pythagoras and Xenophanes by name and in the past tense (fr. 16), he is
in turn referred to by Parmenides (fr. 6). These references are
sufficient to mark his proper place in the history of philosophy. Zeller
holds, indeed, that he cannot have published his work till after 478
B.C., on the ground that the expulsion of his friend Hermodoros, alluded
to in fr. 114, could not have taken place before the downfall of Persian
rule. If that were so, it might be hard to see how Parmenides could have
known the views of Herakleitos; but there is surely no difficulty in
supposing that the Ephesians may have sent one of their foremost
citizens into banishment at a time when they were still paying tribute
to the Great King. The Persians never took their internal
self-government from the Ionian cities, and the spurious _Letters_ of
Herakleitos show the accepted view was that the expulsion of Hermodoros
took place during the reign of Dareios.[321]
Footnote 319:
Diog. ix. 1 (R. P. 29), no doubt from Apollodoros through some
intermediate authority. Jacoby, pp. 227 sqq.
Footnote 320:
Bernays, _Die Heraklitischen Briefe_, pp. 13 sqq.
Footnote 321:
Bernays, _op. cit._ pp. 20 sqq.
Sotion said that Herakleitos was a disciple of Xenophanes,[322] which is
not probable; for Xenophanes seems to have left Ionia for ever before
Herakleitos was born. More likely he was not a disciple of any one; but
it is clear, at the same time, that he was acquainted both with the
Milesian cosmology and with the poems of Xenophanes. He also knew
something of the theories taught by Pythagoras (fr. 17).
Footnote 322:
Sotion _ap._ Diog. ix. 5 (R. P. 29 c).
Of the life of Herakleitos we really know nothing, except, perhaps, that
he belonged to the ancient royal house and resigned the nominal position
of Basileus in favour of his brother.[323] The origin of the other
statements bearing on it is quite transparent.[324]
Footnote 323:
Diog. ix. 6 (R. P. 31).
Footnote 324:
See Patin, _Heraklits Einheitslehre_, pp. 3 sqq. Herakleitos said (fr.
68) that it was death to souls to become water; and we are told
accordingly that he died of dropsy. He said (fr. 114) that the
Ephesians should leave their city to their children, and (fr. 79) that
Time was a child playing draughts. We are therefore told that he
refused to take any part in public life, and went to play with the
children in the temple of Artemis. He said (fr. 85) that corpses were
more fit to be cast out than dung; and we are told that he covered
himself with dung when attacked with dropsy. Lastly, he is said to
have argued at great length with his doctors because of fr. 58. For
these tales see Diog. ix. 3-5, and compare the stories about
Empedokles discussed in Chap. V. § 100.
[Sidenote: His book.]
64. We do not know the title of the work of Herakleitos[325]—if, indeed,
it had one at all—and it is not very easy to form a clear idea of its
contents. We are told that it was divided into three discourses: one
dealing with the universe, one political, and one theological.[326] It
is not likely that this division is due to Herakleitos himself; all we
can infer from the statement is that the work fell naturally into these
three parts when the Stoic commentators took their editions of it in
hand.
Footnote 325:
The variety of titles enumerated in Diog. ix. 12 (R. P. 30 b) seems to
show that none was authentically known. That of “Muses” comes from
Plato, _Soph._ 242 d 7. The others are mere “mottoes” (Schuster)
prefixed by Stoic editors, and intended to emphasise their view that
the subject of the work was ethical or political (Diog. ix. 15; R. P.
30 c).
Footnote 326:
Diog. ix. 5 (R. P. 30). Bywater has followed this hint in his
arrangement of the fragments. The three sections are 1-90, 91-97,
98-130.
The style of Herakleitos is proverbially obscure, and, at a later date,
got him the nickname of “the Dark.”[327] Now the fragments about the
Delphic god and the Sibyl (frs. 11 and 12) seem to show that he was
quite conscious of writing an oracular style, and we have to ask why he
did so. In the first place, it was the manner of the time.[328] The
stirring events of the age, and the influence of the religious revival,
gave something of a prophetic tone to all the leaders of thought. Pindar
and Aischylos have it too. They all feel that they are in some measure
inspired. It is also the age of great individualities, who are apt to be
solitary and disdainful. Herakleitos at least was so. If men cared to
dig for the gold they might find it (fr. 8); if not, they must be
content with straw (fr. 51). This seems to have been the view taken by
Theophrastos, who said that the headstrong temperament of Herakleitos
sometimes led him into incompleteness and inconsistencies of
statement.[329] But that is a very different thing from studied
obscurity and the _disciplina arcani_ sometimes attributed to him; if
Herakleitos does not go out of his way to make his meaning clear,
neither does he hide it (fr. 11).
Footnote 327:
R. P. 30 a. The epithet ὁ σκοτεινός is of late date, but Timon of
Phleious already called him αἰνικτής (fr. 43, Diels).
Footnote 328:
See the valuable observations of Diels in the Introduction to his
_Herakleitos von Ephesos_, pp. iv. sqq.
Footnote 329:
Cf. Diog. ix. 6 (R. P. 31).
[Sidenote: The fragments.]
65. I give a version of the fragments according to the arrangement of
Mr. Bywater’s exemplary edition.[330]
(1) It is wise to hearken, not to me, but to my Word, and to confess
that all things are one.[331] R. P. 40.
(2) Though this Word[332] is true evermore, yet men are as unable to
understand it when they hear it for the first time as before they have
heard it at all. For, though all things come to pass in accordance
with this Word, men seem as if they had no experience of them, when
they make trial of words and deeds such as I set forth, dividing each
thing according to its nature and showing how it truly is. But other
men know not what they are doing when awake, even as they forget what
they do in sleep. R. P. 32.
(3) Fools when they do hear are like the deaf: of them does the saying
bear witness that they are absent when present. R. P. 31 a.
(4) Eyes and ears are bad witnesses to men if they have souls that
understand not their language. R. P. 42.
(5) The many do not take heed of such things as those they meet with,
nor do they mark them when they are taught, though they think they do.
(6) Knowing not how to listen nor how to speak.
(7) If you do not expect the unexpected, you will not find it; for it
is hard to be sought out and difficult.[333]
(8) Those who seek for gold dig up much earth and find a little. R. P.
44 b.
(10) Nature loves to hide. R. P. 34 f.
(11) The lord whose is the oracle at Delphoi neither utters nor hides
his meaning, but shows it by a sign. R. P. 30 a.
(12) And the Sibyl, with raving lips uttering things mirthless,
unbedizened, and unperfumed, reaches over a thousand years with her
voice, thanks to the god in her. R. P. 30 a.
(13) The things that can be seen, heard, and learned are what I prize
the most. R. P. 42.
(14) ... bringing untrustworthy witnesses in support of disputed
points.
(15) The eyes are more exact witnesses than the ears.[334] R. P. 42 c.
(16) The learning of many things teacheth not understanding, else
would it have taught Hesiod and Pythagoras, and again Xenophanes and
Hekataios. R. P. 31.
(17) Pythagoras, son of Mnesarchos, practised inquiry beyond all other
men, and choosing out these writings, claimed for his own wisdom what
was but a knowledge of many things and an art of mischief.[335] R. P.
31 a.
(18) Of all whose discourses I have heard, there is not one who
attains to understanding that wisdom is apart from all. R. P. 32 b.
(19) Wisdom is one thing. It is to know the thought by which all
things are steered through all things. R. P. 40.
(20) This world,[336] which is the same for all, no one of gods or men
has made; but it was ever, is now, and ever shall be an ever-living
Fire, with measures kindling, and measures going out. R. P. 35.[337]
(21) The transformations of Fire are, first of all, sea; and half of
the sea is earth, half whirlwind.[338] ... R. P. 35 b.
(22) All things are an exchange for Fire, and Fire for all things,
even as wares for gold and gold for wares. R. P. 35.
(23) It becomes liquid sea, and is measured by the same tale as before
it became earth.[339] R. P. 39.
(24) Fire is want and surfeit. R. P. 36 a.
(25) Fire lives the death of air,[340] and air lives the death of
fire; water lives the death of earth, earth that of water. R. P. 37.
(26) Fire in its advance will judge and convict[341] all things. R. P.
36 a.
(27) How can one hide from that which never sets?
(28) It is the thunderbolt that steers the course of all things. R. P.
35 b.
(29) The sun will not overstep his measures; if he does, the Erinyes,
the handmaids of Justice, will find him out. R. P. 39.
(30) The limit of East and West is the Bear; and opposite the Bear is
the boundary of bright Zeus.[342]
(31) If there were no sun it would be night, for all the other stars
could do.[343]
(32) The sun is new every day.
(33) See above, Chap. I. p. 41, _n._ 62.
(34) ... the seasons that bring all things.
(35) Hesiod is most men’s teacher. Men think he knew very many things,
a man who did not know day or night! They are one.[344] R. P. 39 b.
(36) God is day and night, winter and summer, war and peace, surfeit
and hunger; but he takes various shapes, just as fire,[345] when it is
mingled with spices, is named according to the savour of each. R. P.
39 b.
(37) If all things were turned to smoke, the nostrils would
distinguish them.
(38) Souls smell in Hades. R. P. 46 d.
(39) Cold things become warm, and what is warm cools; what is wet
dries, and the parched is moisted.
(40) It scatters and it gathers; it advances and retires.
(41, 42) You cannot step twice into the same rivers; for fresh waters
are ever flowing in upon you. R. P. 33.
(43) Homer was wrong in saying: “Would that strife might perish from
among gods and men!” He did not see that he was praying for the
destruction of the universe; for, if his prayer were heard, all things
would pass away.[346]... R. P. 34 d.
(44) War is the father of all and the king of all; and some he has
made gods and some men, some bond and some free. R. P. 34.
(45) Men do not know how what is at variance agrees with itself. It is
an attunement of opposite tensions,[347] like that of the bow and the
lyre. R. P. 34.
(46) It is the opposite which is good for us.[348]
(47) The hidden attunement is better than the open. R. P. 34.
(48) Let us not conjecture at random about the greatest things.
(49) Men that love wisdom must be acquainted with very many things
indeed.
(50) The straight and the crooked path of the fuller’s comb is one and
the same.
(51) Asses would rather have straw than gold. R. P. 31 a.
(51_a_) Oxen are happy when they find bitter vetches to eat.[349] R.
P. 48 b.
(52) The sea is the purest and the impurest water. Fish can drink it,
and it is good for them; to men it is undrinkable and destructive. R.
P. 47 c.
(53) Swine wash in the mire, and barnyard fowls in dust.
(54) ... to delight in the mire.
(55) Every beast is driven to pasture with blows.[350]
(56) Same as 45.
(57) Good and ill are one. R. P. 47 c.
(58) Physicians who cut, burn, stab, and rack the sick, demand a fee
for it which they do not deserve to get. R. P. 47 c.[351]
(59) Couples are things whole and things not whole, what is drawn
together and what is drawn asunder, the harmonious and the discordant.
The one is made up of all things, and all things issue from the
one.[352]
(60) Men would not have known the name of justice if these things were
not.[353]
(61) To God all things are fair and good and right, but men hold some
things wrong and some right. R. P. 45.
(62) We must know that war is common to all and strife is justice, and
that all things come into being and pass away (?) through strife.
(64) All the things we see when awake are death, even as all we see in
slumber are sleep. R. P. 42 c.[354]
(65) The wise is one only. It is unwilling and willing to be called by
the name of Zeus. R. P. 40.
(66) The bow (βιός) is called life (βίος), but its work is death. R.
P. 49 a.
(67) Mortals are immortals and immortals are mortals, the one living
the others’ death and dying the others’ life. R. P. 46.
(68) For it is death to souls to become water, and death to water to
become earth. But water comes from earth; and from water, soul. R. P.
38.
(69) The way up and the way down is one and the same. R. P. 36 d.
(70) In the circumference of a circle the beginning and end are
common.
(71) You will not find the boundaries of soul by travelling in any
direction, so deep is the measure of it.[355] R. P. 41 d.
(72) It is pleasure to souls to become moist. R. P. 46 c.
(73) A man, when he gets drunk, is led by a beardless lad, tripping,
knowing not where he steps, having his soul moist. R. P. 42.
(74-76) The dry soul is the wisest and best.[356] R. P. 42.
(77) Man is kindled and put out like a light in the night-time.
(78) And it is the same thing in us that is quick and dead, awake and
asleep, young and old; the former are shifted[357] and become the
latter, and the latter in turn are shifted and become the former. R.
P. 47.
(79) Time is a child playing draughts, the kingly power is a child’s.
R. P. 40 a.
(80) I have sought for myself. R. P. 48.
(81) We step and do not step into the same rivers; we are and are not.
R. P. 33 a.
(82) It is a weariness to labour for the same masters and be ruled by
them.
(83) It rests by changing.
(84) Even the posset separates if it is not stirred.
(85) Corpses are more fit to be cast out than dung.
(86) When they are born, they wish to live and to meet with their
dooms—or rather to rest—and they leave children behind them to meet
with their dooms in turn.
(87-89) A man may be a grandfather in thirty years.
(90) Those who are asleep are fellow-workers....
(91_a_) Thought is common to all.
(91_b_) Those who speak with understanding must hold fast to what is
common to all as a city holds fast to its law, and even more strongly.
For all human laws are fed by the one divine law. It prevails as much
as it will, and suffices for all things with something to spare. R. P.
43.
(92) So we must follow the common,[358] yet the many live as if they
had a wisdom of their own. R. P. 44.
(93) They are estranged from that with which they have most constant
intercourse.[359] R. P. 32 b.
(94) It is not meet to act and speak like men asleep.
(95) The waking have one common world, but the sleeping turn aside
each into a world of his own.
(96) The way of man has no wisdom, but that of God has. R. P. 45.
(97) Man is called a baby by God, even as a child by a man. R. P. 45.
(98, 99) The wisest man is an ape compared to God, just as the most
beautiful ape is ugly compared to man.
(100) The people must fight for its law as for its walls. R. P. 43 b.
(101) Greater deaths win greater portions. R. P. 49 a.
(102) Gods and men honour those who are slain in battle. R. P. 49 a.
(103) Wantonness needs putting out, even more than a house on fire. R.
P. 49 a.
(104) It is not good for men to get all they wish to get. It is
sickness that makes health pleasant; evil,[360] good; hunger, plenty;
weariness, rest. R. P. 48 b.
(105-107) It is hard to fight with one’s heart’s desire.[361] Whatever
it wishes to get, it purchases at the cost of soul. R. P. 49 a.
(108, 109) It is best to hide folly; but it is hard in times of
relaxation, over our cups.
(110) And it is law, too, to obey the counsel of one. R. P. 49 a.
(111) For what thought or wisdom have they? They follow the poets and
take the crowd as their teacher, knowing not that there are many bad
and few good. For even the best of them choose one thing above all
others, immortal glory among mortals, while most of them are glutted
like beasts.[362] R. P. 31 a.
(112) In Priene lived Bias, son of Teutamas, who is of more account
than the rest. (He said, “Most men are bad.”)
(113) One is ten thousand to me, if he be the best. R. P. 31 a.
(114) The Ephesians would do well to hang themselves, every grown man
of them, and leave the city to beardless lads; for they have cast out
Hermodoros, the best man among them, saying, “We will have none who is
best among us; if there be any such, let him be so elsewhere and among
others.” R. P. 29 b.
(115) Dogs bark at every one they do not know. R. P. 31 a.
(116) ... (The wise man) is not known because of men’s want of belief.
(117) The fool is fluttered at every word. R. P. 44 b.
(118) The most esteemed of them knows but fancies;[363] yet of a truth
justice shall overtake the artificers of lies and the false witnesses.
(119) Homer should be turned out of the lists and whipped, and
Archilochos likewise. R. P. 31.
(120) One day is like any other.
(121) Man’s character is his fate.[364]
(122) There awaits men when they die such things as they look not for
nor dream of. R. P. 46 d.
(123) ... [365]that they rise up and become the wakeful guardians of
the quick and dead. R. P. 46 d.
(124) Night-walkers, Magians, priests of Bakchos and priestesses of
the wine-vat, mystery-mongers....
(125) The mysteries practised among men are unholy mysteries. R. P.
48.
(126) And they pray to these images, as if one were to talk with a
man’s house, knowing not what gods or heroes are. R. P. 49 a.
(127) For if it were not to Dionysos that they made a procession and
sang the shameful phallic hymn, they would be acting most shamelessly.
But Hades is the same as Dionysos in whose honour they go mad and keep
the feast of the wine-vat. R. P. 49.
(129, 130) They vainly purify themselves by defiling themselves with
blood, just as if one who had stepped into the mud were to wash his
feet in mud. Any man who marked him doing thus, would deem him mad. R.
P. 49 a.
Footnote 330:
In his edition, Diels has given up all attempt to arrange the
fragments according to subject, and this makes his text unsuitable for
our purpose. I think, too, that he overestimates the difficulty of an
approximate arrangement, and makes too much of the view that the style
of Herakleitos was “aphoristic.” That it was so, is an important and
valuable remark; but it does not follow that Herakleitos wrote like
Nietzsche. For a Greek, however prophetic in his tone, there must
always be a distinction between an aphoristic and an incoherent style.
See the excellent remarks of Lortzing in _Berl. Phil. Wochenschr._
1896, pp. 1 sqq.
Footnote 331:
Both Bywater and Diels accept Bergk’s λόγου for δόγματος and Miller’s
εἶναι for εἰδέναι. Cf. Philo, _leg. all._ iii. c, quoted in Bywater’s
note.
Footnote 332:
The λόγος is simply the discourse of Herakleitos himself; though, as
he is a prophet, we may call it “the Word.” It can neither mean a
discourse addressed to Herakleitos nor yet “reason.” (Cf. Zeller, p.
630, n. 1; Eng. trans. ii. p. 7, n. 2.) A difficulty has been raised
about the words ἐόντας αἰεί. How could Herakleitos say that his
discourse had always existed? The answer is that in Ionic ἐών means
“true” when coupled with words like λόγος. Cf. Herod. i. 30, τῷ ἐόντι
χρησάμενος λέγει; and even Aristoph. _Frogs_, 1052, οὐκ ὄντα λόγον. It
is only by taking the words in this way that we can understand
Aristotle’s hesitation as to the proper punctuation of the fragment
(_Rhet._ Γ 5. 1407 b 15; R. P. 30 a). The Stoic interpretation given
by Marcus Aurelius, iv. 46 (R. P. 32 b), must be rejected altogether.
The word λόγος was never used like that till post-Aristotelian times.
Footnote 333:
I have departed from the punctuation of Bywater here, and supplied a
fresh object to the verb as suggested by Gomperz (_Arch._ i. 100).
Footnote 334:
Cf. Herod, i. 8. The application is, no doubt, the same as that of the
last two fragments. Personal inquiry is better than tradition.
Footnote 335:
See Chap. II. p. 107, _n._ 224. The best attested reading is
ἐποιήσατο, not ἐποίησεν, and ἐποιήσατο ἑαυτοῦ means “claimed as his
own.” The words ἐκλεξάμενος ταύτας τὰς συγγραφάς have been doubted
since the time of Schleiermacher, and Diels has now come to regard the
whole fragment as spurious. This is because it was used to prove that
Pythagoras wrote books (cf. Diels, _Arch._ iii. p. 451). As Mr.
Bywater has pointed out, however, the fragment itself makes no such
statement; it only says that he read books, which we may presume he
did. I would further suggest that the old-fashioned συγγραφάς is
rather too good for a forger, and that the omission of the very thing
to be proved is remarkable. The last suggestion of a book by
Pythagoras disappears with the reading ἐποιήσατο for ἐποίησεν. Of
course a late writer who read of Pythagoras making extracts from books
would assume that he put them into a book of his own, just as people
did in his own days. For the rest, I understand ἱστορίη of science,
which is contrasted with the κακοτεχνίη which Pythagoras derived from
the συγγραφαί of men like Pherekydes of Syros.
Footnote 336:
The word κόσμος must mean “world” here, not merely “order;” for only
the world could be identified with fire. This use of the word is
Pythagorean, and there is no reason to doubt that Herakleitos may have
known it.
Footnote 337:
It is important to notice that μέτρα is internal accusative with
ἁπτόμενον, “with its measures kindling and its measures going out.”
Footnote 338:
On the word πρηστήρ, see below, p. 165, _n._ 380.
Footnote 339:
The subject of fr. 23 is γῆ, as we see from Diog. ix. 9 (R. P. 36),
πάλιν τε αὖ τὴν γὴν χεῖσθαι; and Aet. i. 3, 11 (_Dox._ p. 284 a 1; b
5), ἔπειτα ἀναχαλωμένην τὴν γῆν ὑπὸ τοῦ τυρὸς χύσει (Dübner: φύσει,
libri) ὕδωρ ἀποτελεῖσθαι. Herakleitos might quite well say γῆ θάλασσα
διαχέεται, and the context in Clement (_Strom._ v. p. 712) seems to
imply this. The phrase μετρέεται εἰς τὸν αὐτὸν λόγον can only mean
that the proportion of the measures remains constant. So practically
Zeller (p. 690, n. 1), _zu derselben Grösse_.
Footnote 340:
With Diels I adopt the transposition (proposed by Tocco) of ἀέρος and
γῆς.
Footnote 341:
I understand ἐπελθόν of the πυρὸς ἔφοδος, for which see below, p. 168.
Diels has pointed out that καταλαμβάνειν is the old word for “to
convict.” It is, literally, “to overtake,” just as αἱρεῖν is “to
catch.”
Footnote 342:
In this fragment it is clear that οὖρος = τέρματα, and therefore means
“boundary,” not “hill.” As αἴθριος Ζεύς means the bright blue sky, I
do not think its οὖρος can be the South Pole, as Diels says. It is
more likely the horizon. I am inclined to take the fragment as a
protest against the Pythagorean theory of a southern hemisphere.
Footnote 343:
We learn from Diog. ix. 10 (quoted below, p. 164) that Herakleitos
explained why the sun was warmer and brighter than the moon, and this
is doubtless a fragment of that passage. I now think the words ἕνεκα
τῶν ἄλλων ἄστρων are from Herakleitos. So Diels.
Footnote 344:
Hesiod said Day was the child of Night (_Theog._ 124).
Footnote 345:
Reading ὅκωσπερ πῦρ for ὅκωσπερ with Diels.
Footnote 346:
_Il._ xviii. 107. I add the words οἰχήσεσθαι γὰρ πάντα from Simpl. _in
Cat._ (88 b 30 schol. Br.). They seem to me at least to represent
something that was in the original.
Footnote 347:
I cannot think it likely that Herakleitos said both παλίντονος and
παλίντροπος ἁρμονίη, and I prefer Plutarch’s παλίντονος (R. P. 34 b)
to the παλίντροπος of Hippolytos. Diels thinks that the polemic of
Parmenides decides the question in favour of παλίντροπος; but see
below, p. 184, _n._ 415, and Chap. IV. p. 198, _n._ 438.
Footnote 348:
This, I now think, is the medical rule αἱ ἰατρεῖαι διὰ τῶν ἐναντίων,
_e.g._ βοηθεῖν τῷ θερμῷ ἐπὶ τὸ ψυχρόν (Stewart on Arist. _Eth._ 1104 b
16).
Footnote 349:
Fr. 51_a_ was recovered by Bywater from Albertus Magnus. See _Journ.
Phil._ ix. p. 230.
Footnote 350:
On fr. 55 see Diels in _Berl. Sitzb._ 1901, p. 188.
Footnote 351:
I now read ἐπαιτέονται with Bernays and Diels.
Footnote 352:
On fr. 59 see Diels in _Berl. Sitzb._ 1901, p. 188. The reading
συνάψιες seems to be well attested and gives an excellent sense. It is
not, however, correct to say that the optative could not be used in an
imperative sense.
Footnote 353:
By “these things,” he probably meant all kinds of injustice.
Footnote 354:
Diels supposes that fr. 64 went on ὁκόσα δὲ τεθνηκότες ζωή. “Life,
Sleep, Death is the threefold ladder in psychology, as in physics
Fire, Water, Earth.”
Footnote 355:
I think now with Diels that the words οὕτω βαθὺν λόγον ἔχει are
probably genuine. They present no difficulty if we remember that λόγος
means “measurement,” as in fr. 23.
Footnote 356:
This fragment is interesting because of the great antiquity of the
corruptions which it has suffered. According to Stephanus, who is
followed by Bywater and Diels, we should read: Αὔη ψυχὴ σοφωτάτη καὶ
ἀρίστη, ξηρή (or rather ξηρά—the Ionic form would only appear when the
word got into the text) being a mere gloss upon the somewhat unusual
αὔη. When once ξηρή got into the text, αὔη became αὐγή, and we get the
sentence: “the dry light is the wisest soul,” whence the _siccum
lumen_ of Bacon. Now this reading is certainly as old as Plutarch,
who, in his Life of Romulus (c. 28), takes αὐγή to mean lightning, as
it sometimes does, and supposes the idea to be that the wise soul
bursts through the prison of the body like dry lightning (whatever
that may be) through a cloud. I do not think that Clement’s making the
same mistake proves anything at all (Zeller, p. 705, n. 3; Eng. trans.
i. p. 80, n. 2), except that he had read his Plutarch. Lastly, it is
worth noticing that, though Plutarch must have written αὐγή, the MSS.
vary between αὕτη and αὐτή. The next stage is the corruption of the
corrupt αὐγή into οὗ γῆ. This yields the sentiment that “where the
earth is dry, the soul is wisest,” and is as old as Philo (see Mr.
Bywater’s notes).
Footnote 357:
I understand μεταπεσόντα here as meaning “moved” from one γραμμή or
division of the draught-board to another.
Footnote 358:
Sext. _Math._ vii. 133, διὸ δεῖ ἕπεσθαι τῷ ξυνῷ. It seems to me that
these words must belong to Herakleitos, though Bywater omits them. On
the other hand, the words τοῦ λόγου δὲ ὄντος ξυνοῦ (so, not δ’ ἐόντος,
the best MSS.) seem clearly to belong to the Stoic interpreter whom
Sextus is following, and who was anxious to connect this fragment with
fr. 2 (ὀλίγα προσδιελθὼν ἐπιφέρει) in order to get the doctrine of the
κοινὸς λόγος. The whole context in Sextus should be read.
Footnote 359:
The words λόγῳ τῳ τὰ ὅλα διοικοῦντι, which Diels prints as part of
this fragment, seem to me to belong to Marcus Aurelius and not to
Herakleitos.
Footnote 360:
Adopting Heitz’s κακὸν for καὶ with Diels.
Footnote 361:
The word θυμός has its Homeric sense. The gratification of desire
implies the exchange of dry soul-fire (fr. 74) for moisture (fr. 72).
Aristotle understood θυμός here as anger (_Eth. Nic._ Β 2, 1105 a 8).
Footnote 362:
This seems to be a clear reference to the “three lives.” See Chap. II.
§ 45, p. 108.
Footnote 363:
Reading δοκέοντα with Schleiermacher (or δοκέοντ’ ὧν with Diels). I
have omitted φυλάσσειν, as I do not know what it means, and none of
the conjectures commends itself.
Footnote 364:
On the meaning of δαίμων here, see my edition of Aristotle’s _Ethics_,
pp. 1 sq. As Professor Gildersleeve puts it, the δαίμων is the
individual form of τύχη, as κήρ is of θάνατος.
Footnote 365:
I have not ventured to include the words ἔνθα δ’ ἐόντι at the
beginning, as the text seems to me too uncertain. See, however,
Diels’s interesting note.
[Sidenote: The doxographical tradition.]
66. It will be seen that some of these fragments are far from clear, and
there are probably not a few of which the meaning will never be
recovered. We naturally turn, then, to the doxographers for a clue; but,
as ill-luck will have it, they are far less instructive with regard to
Herakleitos than we have found them in other cases. We have, in fact,
two great difficulties to contend with. The first is the unusual
weakness of the doxographical tradition itself. Hippolytos, upon whom we
can generally rely for a fairly accurate account of what Theophrastos
really said, derived the material for his first four chapters, which
treat of Thales, Pythagoras, Herakleitos, and Empedokles, not from the
excellent epitome which he afterwards used, but from a biographical
compendium,[366] which consisted for the most part of apocryphal
anecdotes and apophthegms. It was based, further, on some writer of
_Successions_ who regarded Herakleitos and Empedokles as Pythagoreans.
They are therefore placed side by side, and their doctrines are
hopelessly mixed up together. The link between Herakleitos and the
Pythagoreans was Hippasos of Metapontion, in whose system, as we know,
fire played an important part. Theophrastos, following Aristotle, had
spoken of the two in the same sentence, and this was enough to put the
writers of _Successions_ off the track.[367] We are forced, then, to
look to the more detailed of the two accounts of the opinions of
Herakleitos given in Diogenes,[368] which goes back to the _Vetusta
Placita_, and is, fortunately, pretty full and accurate. All our other
sources are more or less tainted.
Footnote 366:
On the source used by Hippolytos in the first four chapters of _Ref._
i. see Diels, _Dox._ p. 145. We must carefully distinguish _Ref._ i.
and _Ref._ ix. as sources of information about Herakleitos. The latter
book is an attempt to show that the Monarchian heresy of Noetos was
derived from Herakleitos instead of from the Gospel, and is a rich
mine of Herakleitean fragments.
Footnote 367:
Arist. _Met._ Α, 3. 984 a 7 (R. P. 56 c): Theophr. _ap._ Simpl.
_Phys._ 23, 33 (R. P. 36 c).
Footnote 368:
For these double accounts see _Dox._ pp. 163 sqq. and Appendix, § 15.
The second difficulty which we have to face is even more serious. Most
of the commentators on Herakleitos mentioned in Diogenes were
Stoics,[369] and it is certain that their paraphrases were sometimes
taken for the original. Now, the Stoics held the Ephesian in peculiar
veneration, and sought to interpret him as far as possible in accordance
with their own system. Further, they were fond of “accommodating”[370]
the views of earlier thinkers to their own, and this has had serious
consequences. In particular, the Stoic theories of the λόγος and the
ἐκπύρωσις are constantly ascribed to Herakleitos by our authorities, and
the very fragments are adulterated with scraps of Stoic terminology.
Footnote 369:
Diog. ix. 15 (R. P. 30 c). Schleiermacher rightly insisted upon this.
Footnote 370:
The word συνοικειοῦν is used of the Stoic method of interpretation by
Philodemos (cf. _Dox._ 547 b, n.), and Cicero (_N.D._ i. 41) renders
it by _accommodare_. Chrysippos in particular gave a great impulse to
this sort of thing, as we may best learn from Galen, _de Plac.
Hippocr. et Plat._ Book iii. Good examples are Aet. i. 13, 2; 28, 1;
iv. 3, 12,—where distinctively Stoic doctrines are ascribed to
Herakleitos. What the Stoics were capable of, we see from Kleanthes,
fr. 55, Pearson. He proposed to read Ζεῦ ἀναδωδωναῖε in _Il._ xvi.
233, ὡς τὸν ἐκ τῆς γῆς ἀναθυμιώμενον ἀέρα διὰ τὴν ἀνάδοσιν
Ἀναδωδωναῖον ὄντα.
[Sidenote: The discovery of Herakleitos.]
67. Herakleitos looks down not only on the mass of men, but on all
previous inquirers into nature. This must mean that he believed himself
to have attained insight into some truth which had not hitherto been
recognised, though it was, as it were, staring men in the face (fr. 93).
Clearly, then, if we wish to get at the central thing in his teaching,
we must try to find out what he was thinking of when he launched into
those denunciations of human dulness and ignorance.[371] The answer
seems to be given in two fragments, 18 and 45. From them we gather that
the truth hitherto ignored is that the many apparently independent and
conflicting things we know are really one, and that, on the other hand,
this one is also many. The “strife of opposites” is really an
“attunement” (ἁρμονία). From this it follows that wisdom is not a
knowledge of many things, but the perception of the underlying unity of
the warring opposites. That this really was the fundamental thought of
Herakleitos is stated by Philo. He says: “For that which is made up of
both the opposites is one; and, when the one is divided, the opposites
are disclosed. Is not this just what the Greeks say their great and much
belauded Herakleitos put in the forefront of his philosophy as summing
it all up, and boasted of as a new discovery?”[372] We shall take the
elements of this theory one by one, and see how they are to be
understood.
Footnote 371:
See Patin, _Heraklits Einheitslehre_ (1886). To Patin undoubtedly
belongs the credit of showing clearly that the unity of opposites was
the central doctrine of Herakleitos. It is not always easy, however,
to follow him when he comes to details.
Footnote 372:
Philo, _Rer. Div. Her._ 43 (R. P. 34 c).
[Sidenote: The One and the Many.]
68. Anaximander had taught already that the opposites were separated out
from the Boundless, but passed away into it once more, so paying the
penalty for their unjust encroachments on one another. It is here
implied that there is something wrong in the war of opposites, and that
the existence of the Many is a breach in the unity of the One. The truth
which Herakleitos proclaimed was that there is no One without the Many,
and no Many without the One. The world is at once one and many, and it
is just the “opposite tension” of the Many that constitutes the unity of
the One.
The credit of having been the first to see this is expressly assigned to
Herakleitos by Plato. In the _Sophist_ (242 d), the Eleatic stranger,
after explaining how the Eleatics maintained that what we call many is
really one, proceeds:—
But certain Ionian and (at a later date) certain Sicilian Muses
remarked that it was safest to unite these two things, and to say that
reality is both many and one, and is kept together by Hate and Love.
“For,” say the more severe Muses, “in its division it is always being
brought together” (cf. fr. 59); while the softer Muses relaxed the
requirement that this should always be so, and said that the All was
alternately one and at peace through the power of Aphrodite, and many
and at war with itself because of something they called Strife.
In this passage the Ionian Muses stand, of course, for Herakleitos, and
the Sicilian for Empedokles. We remark also that the differentiation of
the one into many, and the integration of the many into one, are both
eternal and simultaneous, and that this is the ground upon which the
system of Herakleitos is contrasted with that of Empedokles. We shall
come back to that point again. Meanwhile we confine ourselves to this,
that, according to Plato, Herakleitos taught that reality was at once
many and one.
We must be careful, however, not to imagine that what Herakleitos thus
discovered was a logical principle. This was the mistake of Lassalle’s
book.[373] The identity in and through difference which he proclaimed
was purely physical; logic did not yet exist, and as the principle of
identity had not been formulated, it would have been impossible to
protest against an abstract application of it. The identity which he
explains as consisting in difference is simply that of the primary
substance in all its manifestations. This identity had been realised
already by the Milesians, but they had found a difficulty in the
difference. Anaximander had treated the strife of opposites as an
“injustice,” and what Herakleitos set himself to show was that, on the
contrary, it was the highest justice (fr. 62).
Footnote 373:
The source of his error was Hegel’s remarkable statement that there
was no proposition of Herakleitos that he had not taken up into his
own logic (_Gesch. d. Phil._ i. 328). The example which he cites is
the statement that Being does not exist any more than not-Being, for
which he refers to Arist. _Met._ Α, 4. This, however, is not there
ascribed to Herakleitos at all, but to Leukippos or Demokritos, with
whom it meant that space was as real as matter (§ 175). Aristotle
does, indeed, tell us in the _Metaphysics_ that “some” think
Herakleitos says that the same thing can be and not be; but he adds
that it does not follow that a man thinks what he says (_Met._ Γ 3.
1005 b 24). I take this to mean that, though Herakleitos did make this
assertion in words, he did not mean by it what the same assertion
would naturally have meant at a later date. Herakleitos was speaking
only of nature; the logical meaning of the words never occurred to
him. This is confirmed by Κ, 5. 1062 a 31, where we are told that by
being questioned in a certain manner Herakleitos could be made to
admit the principle of contradiction; as it was, he did not understand
what he said. In other words, he was unconscious of its logical
bearing.
Aristotle was aware, then, that the theories of Herakleitos were not
to be understood in a logical sense. On the other hand, this does not
prevent him from saying that according to the view of Herakleitos,
everything would be true (_Met._ Δ, 7. 1012 a 24). If we remember his
constant attitude to earlier thinkers, this will not lead us to
suspect either his good faith or his intelligence. (See Appendix, §
2.)
[Sidenote: Fire.]
69. All this made it necessary for him to seek out a new primary
substance. He wanted not merely something out of which the diversified
world we know might conceivably be made, or from which opposites could
be “separated out,” but something which of its own nature would pass
into everything else, while everything else would pass in turn into it.
This he found in Fire, and it is easy to see why, if we consider the
phenomenon of combustion, even as it appears to the plain man. The
quantity of fire in a flame burning steadily appears to remain the same,
the flame seems to be what we call a “thing.” And yet the substance of
it is continually changing. It is always passing away in smoke, and its
place is always being taken by fresh matter from the fuel that feeds it.
This is just what we want. If we regard the world as an “ever-living
fire” (fr. 20), we can understand how it is always becoming all things,
while all things are always returning to it.[374]
Footnote 374:
That the Fire of Herakleitos was something on the same level as the
“Air” of Anaximenes and not a “symbol,” is clearly implied in such
passages as Arist. _Met._ Α, 3. 984 a 5. In support of the view that
something different from common fire is meant, Plato, _Crat._ 413 b,
is sometimes quoted; but a consideration of the context shows that the
passage will not bear this interpretation. Plato is discussing the
derivation of δίκαιον from δια-ιόν, and certainly δίκη was a prominent
Herakleitean conception, and a good deal that is here said may be the
authentic doctrine of the school. Sokrates goes on to complain that
when he asks what this is which “goes through” everything, he gets
very inconsistent answers. One says it is the sun. Another asks if
there is no justice after sunset, and says it is simply fire. A third
says it is not fire itself, but the heat which is in fire. A fourth
identifies it with Mind. Now all we are entitled to infer from this is
that different accounts were given in the Herakleitean school. These
were a little less crude than the original doctrine of the master, but
for all that not one of them implies anything immaterial or
symbolical. The view that it was not fire itself, but Heat, which
“passed through” all things, is related to the theory of Herakleitos
as Hippo’s Moisture is related to the Water of Thales. It is quite
likely, too, that some Herakleiteans attempted to fuse the system of
Anaxagoras with their own, just as Diogenes of Apollonia tried to fuse
it with that of Anaximenes. We shall see, indeed, that we still have a
work in which this attempt is made (p. 167, _n._ 383).
[Sidenote: Flux.]
70. This necessarily brings with it a certain way of looking at the
change and movement of the world. Fire burns continuously and without
interruption. It is therefore always consuming fuel and always
liberating smoke. Everything is either mounting upwards to serve as
fuel, or sinking downwards after having nourished the flame. It follows
that the whole of reality is like an ever-flowing stream, and that
nothing is ever at rest for a moment. The substance of the things we see
is in constant change. Even as we look at them, some of the matter of
which they are composed has already passed into something else, while
fresh matter has come into them from another source. This theory is
usually summed up, appropriately enough, in the phrase “All things are
flowing” (πάντα ῥεῖ), though, as it happens, it cannot be proved that
this is a quotation from Herakleitos. Plato, however, expresses the idea
quite clearly. “Nothing ever is, everything is becoming”; “All things
are in motion like streams”; “All things are passing, and nothing
abides”; “Herakleitos says somewhere that all things pass and naught
abides; and, comparing things to the current of a river, he says that
you cannot step twice into the same stream” (cf. fr. 41)—these are the
terms in which he describes the system. And Aristotle says the same
thing, “All things are in motion,” “nothing steadfastly is.”[375]
Herakleitos held, in fact, that any given thing, however stable in
appearance, was merely a section in the stream, and that the matter
composing it was never the same in any two consecutive moments of time.
We shall see presently how he conceived this process to operate;
meanwhile we remark that the idea was not altogether novel, and that it
is hardly the central point in the system of Herakleitos. The Milesians
held a similar view. The flux of Herakleitos was at most more unceasing
and universal.
Footnote 375:
Plato, _Tht._ 152 e 1; _Crat._ 401 d 5, 402 a 8; Arist. _Top._ Α, 11.
104 b 22; _de Caelo_, Γ, 1. 298 b 30; _Phys._ Θ, 3. 253 b 2.
[Sidenote: The Upward and Downward path.]
71. Herakleitos appears to have worked out the details of the perpetual
flux with reference to the theories of Anaximenes.[376] It is unlikely,
however, that he explained the transformations of matter by means of
rarefaction and condensation.[377] Theophrastos, it appears, suggested
that he did; but he allowed it was by no means clear. The passage from
Diogenes which we are about to quote has faithfully preserved this
touch.[378] In the fragments, at any rate, we find nothing about
rarefaction and condensation. The expression used is “exchange” (fr.
22); and this is certainly a very good name for what happens when fire
gives out smoke and takes in fuel instead.
Footnote 376:
See above, Chap. I. § 29.
Footnote 377:
See, however, the remark of Diels quoted R. P. 36 c.
Footnote 378:
Diog. ix. 8, σαφῶς δ’ οὐθὲν ἐκτίθεται.
It has been pointed out that, in default of Hippolytos, our best account
of the Theophrastean doxography of Herakleitos is the fuller of the two
accounts given in Laertios Diogenes. It is as follows:—
His opinions on particular points are these:—
He held that Fire was the element, and that all things were an
exchange for fire, produced by condensation and rarefaction. But he
explains nothing clearly. All things were produced in opposition, and
all things were in flux like a river.
The all is finite and the world is one. It arises from fire, and is
consumed again by fire alternately through all eternity in certain
cycles. This happens according to fate. That which leads to the
becoming of the opposites is called War and Strife; that which leads
to the final conflagration is Concord and Peace.
He called change the upward and the downward path, and held that the
world comes into being in virtue of this. When fire is condensed it
becomes moist, and when compressed it turns to water; water being
congealed turns to earth, and this he calls the downward path. And,
again, the earth is in turn liquefied, and from it water arises, and
from that everything else; for he refers almost everything to the
evaporation from the sea. This is the path upwards. R. P. 36.
He held, too, that exhalations arose both from the sea and the land;
some bright and pure, others dark. Fire was nourished by the bright
ones, and moisture by the others.
He does not make it clear what is the nature of that which surrounds
the world. He held, however, that there were bowls in it with the
concave sides turned towards us, in which the bright exhalations were
collected and produced flames. These were the heavenly bodies.
The flame of the sun was the brightest and warmest; for the other
heavenly bodies were more distant from the earth; and for that reason
gave less light and heat. The moon, on the other hand, was nearer the
earth; but it moved through an impure region. The sun moved in a
bright and unmixed region, and at the same time was at just the right
distance from us. That is why it gives more heat and light. The
eclipses of the sun and moon were due to the turning of the bowls
upwards, while the monthly phases of the moon were produced by a
gradual turning of its bowl.
Day and night, months and seasons and years, rains and winds, and
things like these, were due to the different exhalations. The bright
exhalation, when ignited in the circle of the sun, produced day, and
the preponderance of the opposite exhalations produced night. The
increase of warmth proceeding from the bright exhalation produced
summer, and the preponderance of moisture from the dark exhalation
produced winter. He assigns the causes of other things in conformity
with this.
As to the earth, he makes no clear statement about its nature, any
more than he does about that of the bowls.
These, then, were his opinions. R. P. 39 b.
It is obvious that, if we can trust this passage, it is of the greatest
possible value; and that, upon the whole, we can trust it is shown by
the fact that it follows the exact order of topics to which all the
doxographies derived from the great work of Theophrastos adhere. First
we have the primary substance, then the world, then the heavenly bodies,
and lastly, meteorological phenomena. We conclude, then, that it may be
accepted with the exceptions, firstly, of the probably erroneous
conjecture of Theophrastos as to rarefaction and condensation mentioned
above; and secondly, of some pieces of Stoical interpretation which come
from the _Vetusta Placita_.
Let us look at the details of the theory. The pure fire, we are told, is
to be found chiefly in the sun. This, like the other heavenly bodies, is
a trough or bowl, or perhaps a sort of boat, with the concave side
turned towards us, in which the bright exhalations from the sea collect
and burn. How does the fire of the sun pass into other forms? If we look
at the fragments which deal with the downward path, we find that the
first transformation that it undergoes is into sea, and we are further
told that half of the sea is earth and half of it πρηστήρ (fr. 21). The
full meaning of this we shall see presently, but we must settle at once
what πρηστήρ is. Many theories have been advanced upon the subject; but,
so far as I know, no one[379] has yet proposed to take the word in the
sense which it always bears elsewhere, that, namely, of hurricane
accompanied by a fiery waterspout.[380] Yet surely this is just what is
wanted. It is amply attested that Herakleitos explained the rise of the
sea to fire by means of the bright evaporations; and we want a similar
meteorological explanation of the passing of the fire back into sea. We
want, in fact, something which will stand equally for the smoke produced
by the burning of the sun and for the immediate stage between fire and
water. What could serve the turn better than a fiery waterspout? It
sufficiently resembles smoke to be accounted for as the product of the
sun’s combustion, and it certainly comes down in the form of water. And
this interpretation becomes practically certain when taken in connexion
with the report of Aetios as to the Herakleitean theory of πρηστῆρες.
They were due, we are told, “to the kindling and extinction of
clouds.”[381] In other words, the bright vapour, after kindling in the
bowl of the sun and going out again, reappears as the dark fiery
storm-cloud, and so passes once more into sea. At the next stage we find
water continually passing into earth. We are already familiar with this
idea (§ 10), and no more need be said about it. Turning to the “upward
path,” we find that the earth is liquefied in the same proportion as the
sea becomes earth, so that the sea is still “measured by the same tale”
(fr. 23). Half of it is earth and half of it is πρηστήρ (fr. 21). This
must mean that, at any given moment, half of the sea is taking the
downward path, and has just been fiery storm-cloud, while half of it is
going up, and has just been earth. In proportion as the sea is increased
by rain, water passes into earth; in proportion as the sea is diminished
by evaporation, it is fed by the earth. Lastly, the ignition of the
bright vapour from the sea in the bowl of the sun completes the circle
of the “upward and downward path.”
Footnote 379:
This was written in 1890. In his _Herakleitos von Ephesos_ (1901)
Diels takes it as I did, rendering _Glutwind_.
Footnote 380:
Cf. Herod. vii. 42, and Lucretius, vi. 424. Seneca (_Quaest. Nat._ ii.
56) calls it _igneus turbo_. The opinions of early philosophers on
these phenomena are collected in Aetios, iii. 3. The πρηστήρ of
Anaximander (Chap. I. p. 69, _n._ 133) is a different thing
altogether, but it is quite likely that Greek sailors named the
meteorological phenomenon after the familiar bellows of the smith.
Footnote 381:
Aet. iii. 3, 9, πρηστῆρας δὲ κατὰ νεφῶν ἐμπρήσεις καὶ σβέσεις (sc.
Ἡράκλειτος ἀποφαίνεται γίγνεσθαι). Diels (_Herakleitos_, p. v.) seems
to regard the πρηστήρ as the form in which water ascends to heaven.
But the Greeks were well aware that waterspouts burst and come down.
[Sidenote: Measure for measure.]
72. The question now arises, How is it that, in spite of this constant
flux, things appear relatively stable? The answer of Herakleitos was
that it is owing to the observance of the “measures,” in virtue of which
the aggregate bulk of each form of matter in the long run remains the
same, though its substance is constantly changing. Certain “measures” of
the “ever-living fire” are always being kindled, while like “measures”
are always going out (fr. 20); and these measures the sun will not
exceed. All things are “exchanged” for fire and fire for all things (fr.
22), and this implies that for everything it takes, fire will give as
much. “The sun will not exceed his measures” (fr. 29).
And yet the “measures” are not to be regarded as absolutely fixed. We
gather from the passage of Diogenes quoted above that Theophrastos spoke
of an alternate preponderance of the bright and dark exhalations, and
Aristotle speaks of Herakleitos as explaining all things by
evaporation.[382] In particular, the alternation of day and night,
summer and winter, were accounted for in this way. Now, in a passage of
the pseudo-Hippokratean treatise Περὶ διαίτης which is almost certainly
of Herakleitean origin,[383] we read of an “advance of fire and water”
in connexion with day and night and the courses of the sun and
moon.[384] In fr. 26, again, we read of fire “advancing,” and all these
things seem to be intimately connected. We must therefore try to see
whether there is anything in the remaining fragments that bears upon the
subject.
Footnote 382:
Arist. _de An._ Β, 2. 405 a 26, τὴν ἀναθυμίασιν ἐξ ἧς τἆλλα
συνίστησιν.
Footnote 383:
The presence of Herakleitean matter in this treatise was pointed out
by Gesner, but Bernays was the first to make any considerable use of
it in reconstructing the system. The older literature of the subject
has been in the main superseded by Carl Fredrichs’ _Hippokratische
Untersuchungen_ (1899), where also a satisfactory text of the sections
which concern us is given for the first time. Fredrichs shows that (as
I said already in the first edition) the work belongs to the period of
eclecticism and reaction which I have briefly characterised in § 184,
and he points out that c 3, which was formerly supposed to be mainly
Herakleitean, is really from some work which was strongly influenced
by Empedokles and Anaxagoras. I think, however, that he goes wrong in
attributing the section to a nameless “Physiker” of the school of
Archelaos, or even to Archelaos himself; it is far more like what we
should expect from the eclectic Herakleiteans whom Plato describes in
_Crat._ 413 c (see p. 161, _n._ 374). He is certainly wrong in holding
the doctrine of the balance of fire and water not to be Herakleitean,
and there is no justification for separating the remark quoted in the
text from its context because it happens to agree almost verbally with
the beginning of c. 3. As we shall see, that passage too is of
Herakleitean origin.
Footnote 384:
Περὶ διαίτης, i. 5. I should read thus: ἡμέρη καὶ εὐφρόνη ἐπὶ τὸ
μήκιστον καὶ ἐλάχιστον· ἥλιος, σελήνη ἐπὶ τὸ μήκιστον καὶ ἐλάχιστον·
πυρὸς ἔφοδος καὶ ὕδατος. In any case, the meaning is the same, and the
sentence occurs between χωρεῖ δὲ πάντα καὶ θεῖα καὶ ἀνθρώπινα ἄνω καὶ
κάτω ἀμειβόμενα and πάντα ταὐτὰ καὶ οὐ τὰ αὐτά, which are surely
Herakleitean utterances.
[Sidenote: Man]
73. In studying this alternate advance of fire and water, it will be
convenient to start with the microcosm. We have more definite
information about the two exhalations in man than about the analogous
processes in the world at large, and it would seem that Herakleitos
himself explained the world by man rather than man by the world. In a
well-known passage, Aristotle implies that soul is identical with the
dry exhalation,[385] and this is fully confirmed by the fragments. Man
is made up of three things, fire, water, and earth. But, just as in the
macrocosm fire is identified with the one wisdom, so in the microcosm
the fire alone is conscious. When it has left the body, the remainder,
the mere earth and water, is altogether worthless (fr. 85). Of course,
the fire which animates man is subject to the “upward and downward
path,” just as much as the fire of the world. The Περὶ διαίτης has
preserved the obviously Herakleitean sentence: “All things are passing,
both human and divine, upwards and downwards by exchanges.”[386] We are
just as much in perpetual flux as anything else in the world. We are and
are not the same for two consecutive instants (fr. 81). The fire in us
is perpetually becoming water, and the water earth; but, as the opposite
process goes on simultaneously, we appear to remain the same.[387]
Footnote 385:
Arist. _de An._ Α, 2. 405 a 25 (R. P. 38). Diels attributes to
Herakleitos himself the words καὶ ψυχαὶ δὲ ἀπὸ τῶν ὑγρῶν ἀναθυμιῶνται,
which are found in Areios Didymos after fr. 42. I can hardly believe,
however, that the _word_ ἀναθυμίασις is Herakleitean. He seems rather
to have called the two exhalations καπνός and ἀήρ (cf. fr. 37).
Footnote 386:
Περὶ διαίτης, i. 5, χωρεῖ δὲ πάντα καὶ θεῖα καὶ ἀνθρώπινα ἄνω καὶ κάτω
ἀμειβόμενα.
Footnote 387:
We seem to have a clear reference to this in Epicharmos, fr. 2, Diels
(170 b, Kaibel): “Look now at men too. One grows and another passes
away, and all are in change always. What changes in its substance
(κατὰ φύσιν) and never abides in the same spot, will already be
something different from what has passed away. So thou and I were
different yesterday, and are now quite other people, and again we
shall become others and never the same again, and so on in the same
way.” This is put into the mouth of a debtor who does not wish to pay.
See Bernays on the αὐξανόμενος λόγος (_Ges. Abh._ i. pp. 109 sqq.).
[Sidenote: (_a_) Sleeping and waking.]
74. This, however, is not all. Man is subject to a certain oscillation
in his “measures” of fire and water, and this gives rise to the
alternations of sleeping and waking, life and death. The _locus
classicus_ on this subject is a passage of Sextus Empiricus, which
reproduces the account of the Herakleitean psychology given by
Ainesidemos (Skeptic, _c._ 80-50 B.C.).[388] It is as follows (R. P.
41):—
The natural philosopher is of opinion that what surrounds us[389] is
rational and endowed with consciousness. According to Herakleitos,
when we draw in this divine reason by means of respiration, we become
rational. In sleep we forget, but at our waking we become conscious
once more. For in sleep, when the openings of the senses close, the
mind which is in us is cut off from contact with that which surrounds
us, and only our connexion with it by means of respiration is
preserved as a sort of root (from which the rest may spring again);
and, when it is thus separated, it loses the power of memory that it
had before. When we awake again, however, it looks out through the
openings of the senses, as if through windows, and coming together
with the surrounding mind, it assumes the power of reason. Just, then,
as embers, when they are brought near the the fire, change and become
red-hot, and go out when they are taken away from it again, so does
the portion of the surrounding mind which sojourns in our body become
irrational when it is cut off, and so does it become of like nature to
the whole when contact is established through the greatest number of
openings.
Footnote 388:
Sextus quotes “Ainesidemos according to Herakleitos.” Natorp holds
(_Forschungen_, p. 78) that Ainesidemos really did combine
Herakleiteanism with Skepticism. Diels, on the other hand (_Dox._ pp.
210, 211), insists that Ainesidemos only gave an account of the
theories of Herakleitos. This controversy does not affect the use we
make of the passage.
Footnote 389:
τὸ περιέχον ἡμᾶς, opposed to but parallel with τὸ περιέχον τὸν κόσμον.
In this passage there is obviously a very large admixture of later
phraseology and of later ideas. In particular, the identification of
“that which surrounds us” with the air cannot be Herakleitean; for
Herakleitos can have known nothing of air, which in his day was regarded
as a form of water (§ 27). The reference to the pores or openings of the
senses is probably foreign to him also; for the theory of pores is due
to Alkmaion (§ 96). Lastly, the distinction between mind and body is far
too sharply drawn. On the other hand, the important rôle assigned to
respiration may very well be Herakleitean; for we have met with it
already in Anaximenes. And we can hardly doubt that the striking simile
of the embers which glow when they are brought near the fire is genuine
(cf. fr. 77). The true Herakleitean doctrine doubtless was, that sleep
was produced by the encroachment of moist, dark exhalations from the
water in the body, which cause the fire to burn low. In sleep, we lose
contact with the fire in the world which is common to all, and retire to
a world of our own (fr. 95). In a soul where the fire and water are
evenly balanced, the equilibrium is restored in the morning by an equal
advance of the bright exhalation.
[Sidenote: (_b_) Life and death.]
75. But in no soul are the fire and water thus evenly balanced for long.
One or the other acquires predominance, and the result in either case is
death. Let us take each of these cases in turn. It is death, we know, to
souls to become water (fr. 68); but that is just what happens to souls
which seek after pleasure. For pleasure is a moistening of the soul (fr.
72), as may be seen in the case of the drunken man, who, in pursuit of
it, has moistened his soul to such an extent that he does not know where
he is going (fr. 73). Even in gentle relaxation over our cups, it is
more difficult to hide folly than at other times (fr. 108). That is why
it is so necessary for us to quench wantonness (fr. 103); for whatever
our heart’s desire insists on it purchases at the price of life, that
is, of the fire within us (fr. 105). Take now the other case. The dry
soul, that which has least moisture, is the best (fr. 74); but the
preponderance of fire causes death as much as that of water. It is a
very different death, however, and wins “greater portions” for those who
die it (fr. 101). Apparently those who fall in battle share their lot
(fr. 102). We have no fragment which tells us directly what it is, but
the class of utterances we are about to look at next leaves little doubt
on the subject. Those who die the fiery and not the watery death,
become, in fact, gods, though in a different sense from that in which
the one Wisdom is god. It is probable that the corrupt fragment 123
refers to this unexpected fate (fr. 122) that awaits men when they die.
Further, just as summer and winter are one, and necessarily reproduce
one another by their “opposite tension,” so do life and death. They,
too, are one, we are told; and so are youth and age (fr. 78). It follows
that the soul will be now living and now dead; that it will only turn to
fire or water, as the case may be, to recommence once more its unceasing
upward and downward path. The soul that has died from excess of moisture
sinks down to earth; but from the earth comes water, and from water is
once more exhaled a soul (fr. 68). So, too, we are told (fr. 67) that
gods and men are really one. They live each others’ life, and die each
others’ death. Those mortals that die the fiery death become
immortal,[390] they become the guardians of the quick and the dead (fr.
123);[391] and those immortals become mortal in their turn. Everything
is really the death of something else (fr. 64). The living and the dead
are always changing places (fr. 78), like the pieces on a child’s
draught-board (fr. 79), and this applies not only to the souls that have
become water, but to those that have become fire and are now guardian
spirits. The real weariness is continuance in the same state (fr. 82),
and the real rest is change (fr. 83). Rest in any other sense is
tantamount to dissolution (fr. 84).[392] So they too are born once more.
Herakleitos estimated the duration of the cycle which preserves the
balance of life and death as thirty years, the shortest time in which a
man may become a grandfather (frs. 87-89).[393]
Footnote 390:
The popular word is used for the sake of its paradoxical effect.
Strictly speaking, they are all mortal from one point of view and
immortal from another.
Footnote 391:
We need not hesitate to ascribe to Herakleitos the view that the dead
become guardian demons of the living; it appears already in Hesiod,
_Works and Days_, 121, and the Orphic communities had popularised it.
Rohde, _Psyche_ (pp. 442 sqq.), refused to admit that Herakleitos
believed the soul survived after death. Strictly speaking, it is no
doubt an inconsistency; but I believe, with Zeller and Diels, that it
is one of a kind we may well admit. Many thinkers have spoken of a
personal immortality, though there was really no room for it in their
systems. It is worthy of note in this connexion that the first
argument which Plato uses to establish the doctrine of immortality in
the _Phaedo_ is just the Herakleitean parallelism of life and death
with sleeping and waking.
Footnote 392:
These fragments are quoted by Plotinos, Iamblichos, and Noumenios in
this very connexion (see R. P. 46 c), and it does not seem to me
possible to hold, with Rohde, that they had no grounds for so
interpreting them. They knew the context and we do not.
Footnote 393:
Plut. _def. orac._ 415 d, ἔτη τριάκοντα ποιοῦσι τὴν γενεὰν καθ’
Ἡράκλειτον, ἐν ᾧ χρόνῳ γεννῶντα παρέχει τὸν ἐξ αὑτοῦ γεγεννημένον ὁ
γεννήσας. Philo, fr. Harris, p. 20, δυνατὸν ἐν τριακοστῷ ἔτει αὖ τὸν
ἄνθρωπον πάππον γενέσθαι κ.τ.λ. Censorinus, _de die nat._ 17, 2, “hoc
enim tempus (triaginta annos) _genean_ vocari Heraclitus auctor est,
quia _orbis aetatis_ in eo sit spatio: orbem autem vocat aetatis, dum
natura ab sementi humana ad sementim revertitur.” The words _orbis
aetatis_ seem to mean αἰῶνος κύκλος, “the circle of life.” If so, we
may compare the Orphic κύκλος γενέσεως.
[Sidenote: The day and the year.]
76. Let us turn now to the world. Diogenes tells us that fire was kept
up by the bright vapours from land and sea, and moisture by the
dark.[394] What are these “dark” vapours which increase the moist
element? If we remember the “Air” of Anaximenes, we shall be inclined to
regard them as darkness itself. We know that the idea of darkness as
privation of light is not natural to the unsophisticated mind. We
sometimes hear even now of darkness “thick enough to cut with a knife.”
I suppose, then, that Herakleitos believed night and winter to be
produced by the rise of darkness from earth and sea—he saw, of course,
that the valleys were dark before the hill-tops,—and that this darkness,
being moist, so increased the watery element as to put out the sun’s
light. This, however, destroys the power of darkness itself. It can no
longer rise upwards unless the sun gives it motion, and so it becomes
possible for a fresh sun (fr. 32) to be kindled, and to nourish itself
at the expense of the moist element for a time. But it can only be for a
time. The sun, by burning up the bright vapour, deprives himself of
nourishment, and the dark vapour once more gets the upper hand. It is in
this sense that “day and night are one” (fr. 35). Each implies the
other, and they are therefore to be regarded as merely two sides of the
one, in which alone their true ground of explanation is to be found (fr.
36).
Footnote 394:
Diog. ix. 9 (R. P. 39 b).
Summer and winter were easily to be explained in the same way. We know
that the “turnings” of the sun were a subject of interest in those days,
and it was natural for Herakleitos to see in its retreat further to the
south the gradual advance of the moist element, caused by the heat of
the sun itself. This, however, diminishes the power of the sun to cause
evaporation, and so it must return to the north once more that it may
supply itself with nourishment. Such was, at any rate, the Stoic
doctrine on the subject,[395] and that it comes from Herakleitos seems
to be proved by its occurrence in the Περὶ διαίτης. It seems impossible
to refer the following sentence to any other source:—
And in turn each (fire and water) prevails and is prevailed over to
the greatest and least degree that is possible. For neither can
prevail altogether for the following reasons. If fire advances towards
the utmost limit of the water, its nourishment fails it. It retires,
then, to a place where it can get nourishment. And if water advances
towards the utmost limit of the fire, movement fails it. At that
point, then, it stands still; and, when it has come to a stand, it has
no longer power to resist, but is consumed as nourishment for the fire
that falls upon it. For these reasons neither can prevail altogether.
But if at any time either should be in any way overcome, then none of
the things that exist would be as they are now. So long as things are
as they are, fire and water will always be too, and neither will ever
fail.[396]
Footnote 395:
See Kleanthes, fr. 29, Pearson, ὠκεανὸς δ’ ἐστὶ <καὶ γῆ> ἧς τὴν
ἀναθυμίασιν ἐπινέμεται (ὁ ἥλιος). Cf. Cic. _N.D._ iii. 37: “Quid enim?
non eisdem vobis placet omnem ignem pastus indigere nec permanere ullo
modo posse, nisi alitur: ali autem solem, lunam, reliqua astra aquis,
alia dulcibus (from the earth), alia marinis? eamque causam Cleanthes
adfert cur se sol referat nec longius progrediatur solstitiali orbi
itemque brumali, ne longius discedat a cibo.”
Footnote 396:
For the Greek text of this passage, see below, p. 183, _n._ 413.
Fredrichs allows that it is from the same source as that quoted above
(p. 169), and, as that comes from Περὶ διαίτης, i. 3, he denies the
Herakleitean origin of this too. He has not taken account of the fact
that it gives the Stoic doctrine, which raises a presumption in favour
of that being Herakleitean. If I could agree with Fredrichs’ theory, I
should still say that the present passage was a Herakleitean
interpolation in the _Physiker_ rather than that the other was an
interpolation from the _Physiker_ in the Herakleitean section. As it
is, I find no difficulty in believing that both passages give the
Herakleitean doctrine, though it becomes mixed up with other theories
in the sequel. See p. 167, _n._ 383.
[Sidenote: The Great Year.]
77. Herakleitos spoke also of a longer period, which is identified with
the “Great Year,” and is variously described as lasting 18,000 and
10,800 years.[397] We have no definite statement, however, of what
process Herakleitos supposed to take place in the Great Year. We have
seen that the period of 36,000 years was, in all probability,
Babylonian, and was that of the revolution which produces the precession
of the equinoxes.[398] Now 18,000 years is just half that period, a fact
which may be connected with Herakleitos’s way of dividing all cycles
into an “upward and downward path” It is not at all likely, however,
that Herakleitos, who held with Xenophanes that the sun was “new every
day,” would trouble himself about the precession of the equinoxes, and
we seem forced to assume that he gave some new application to the
traditional period. The Stoics, or some of them, held that the Great
Year was the period between one world-conflagration and the next. They
were careful, however, to make it a good deal longer than Herakleitos
did, and, in any case, we are not entitled without more ado to credit
him with the theory of a general conflagration.[399] We must try first,
if possible, to interpret the Great Year on the analogy of the shorter
periods discussed already.
Footnote 397:
Aet. ii. 32, 3, Ἡράκλειτος ἐκ μυρίων ὀκτακισχιλίων ἐνιαυτῶν ἡλιακῶν
(τὸν μέγαν ἐνιαυτὸν εἶναι). Censorinus, _de die nat._ 11, Heraclitus
et Linus, XDCCC.
Footnote 398:
See Introd. § XII. p. 25, _n._ 39.
Footnote 399:
For the Stoic doctrine, cf. Nemesios, _de nat. hom._ 38 (R. P. 503).
Mr. Adam allowed that no destruction of the world or conflagration
marked the end of Plato’s year, but he declined to draw what seems to
me the natural inference that the connexion between the two things
belongs to a later age, and should not, therefore, be ascribed to
Herakleitos in the absence of any evidence that he did so connect
them. Nevertheless, his treatment of these questions in the second
volume of his edition of the _Republic_, pp. 302 sqq., must form the
basis of all further discussion on the subject. It has certainly
helped me to put the view which he rejects (p. 303, n. 9) in what I
hope will be found a more convincing form.
Now we have seen that a generation is the shortest time in which a man
can become a grandfather, it is the period of the upward or downward
path of the soul, and the most natural interpretation of the longer
period would surely be that it represents the time taken by a “measure”
of the fire in the world to travel on the downward path to earth or
return to fire once more by the upward path. Plato certainly implies
that such a parallelism between the periods of man and the world was
recognised,[400] and this receives a curious confirmation from a passage
in Aristotle, which is usually supposed to refer to the doctrine of a
periodic conflagration. He is discussing the question whether the
“heavens,” that is to say, what he calls the “first heaven,” is eternal
or not, and he naturally enough, from his own point of view, identifies
this with the Fire of Herakleitos. He quotes him along with Empedokles
as holding that the “heavens” are alternately as they are now and in
some other state, one of passing away; and he goes on to point out that
this is not really to say they pass away, any more than it would be to
say that a man ceases to be, if we said that he turned from boy to man
and then from man to boy again.[401] It is surely clear that this is a
reference to the parallel between the generation and the Great Year,
and, if so, the ordinary interpretation of the passage must be wrong. It
is true that it is not quite consistent with the theory to suppose that
a “measure” of Fire could preserve its identity throughout the whole of
its upward and downward path; but it is exactly the same inconsistency
that we have felt bound to recognise with regard to the continuance of
individual souls, a fact which is really in favour of our
interpretation. It should be added that, while 18,000 is half 36,000,
10,800 is 360 × 30, which would make each generation a day in the Great
Year.[402]
Footnote 400:
This is certainly the general sense of the parallelism between the
periods of the ἀνθρώπειον and the θεῖον γεννητόν, however we may
understand the details. See Adam, _Republic_, vol. ii. pp. 288 sqq.
Footnote 401:
Arist. _de Caelo_, Α, 10. 279 b 14, οἱ δ’ ἐναλλὰξ ὁτὲ μὲν οὕτως ὁτὲ δὲ
ἄλλως ἔχειν φθειρόμενον, ... ὥσπερ Ἐμπεδοκλῆς ὀ Ἀκραγαντῖνος καὶ
Ἡράκλειτος ὁ Ἐφέσιος. Aristotle points out that this really amounts
only to saying that it is eternal and changes its form, ὥσπερ εἴ τις
ἐκ παιδὸς ἄνδρα γιγνόμενον καὶ ἐξ ἀνδρὸς παῖδα ὁτὲ μὲν φθείρεσθαι, ὁτὲ
δ’ εἶναι οἴοιτο (280 a 14). The point of the reference to Empedokles
will appear from _de Gen. Corr._ Β, 6. 334 a 1 sqq. What Aristotle
finds fault with in both theories is that they do not regard the
substance of the heavens as something outside the upward and downward
motion of the elements.
Footnote 402:
This is practically Lassalle’s view of the Great Year, except that he
commits the anachronism of speaking of “atoms” of fire instead of
“measures.”
[Sidenote: Did Herakleitos teach a general conflagration?]
78. Most modern writers, however, ascribe to Herakleitos the doctrine of
a periodical conflagration or ἐκπύρωσις, to use the Stoic term.[403]
That this is inconsistent with the theory, as we have interpreted it, is
obvious, and is indeed admitted by Zeller. To his paraphrase of the
statement of Plato quoted above (p. 159) he adds the words: “Herakleitos
did not intend to retract this principle in the doctrine of a periodic
change in the constitution of the world; if the two doctrines are not
compatible, it is a contradiction which he has not observed.” Now, it is
in itself quite likely that there were contradictions in the discourse
of Herakleitos, but it is very unlikely that there was this particular
one. In the first place, it is a contradiction of the central idea of
his system, the thought that possessed his whole mind (§ 67), and we can
only admit the possibility of that, if the evidence for it should prove
irresistible. In the second place, such an interpretation destroys the
whole point of Plato’s contrast between Herakleitos and Empedokles (§
68), which is just that, while Herakleitos said the One was always many,
and the Many always one, Empedokles said the All was many and one by
turns. Zeller’s interpretation obliges us, then, to suppose that
Herakleitos flatly contradicted his own discovery without noticing it,
and that Plato, in discussing this very discovery, was also blind to the
contradiction.[404]
Footnote 403:
Schleiermacher and Lassalle are notable exceptions. Zeller, Diels, and
Gomperz are all positive that Herakleitos believed in the ἐκπύρωσις.
Footnote 404:
In his fifth edition (p. 699) Zeller seems to feel this last
difficulty; for he now says: “It is a contradiction which he, _and
which probably Plato too_ (_und den wahrscheinlich auch Plato_) has
not observed.” This seems to me still less arguable. Plato may or may
not be mistaken; but he makes the perfectly definite statement that
Herakleitos says ἀεί, while Empedokles says ἐν μέρει. The Ionian Muses
are called συντονώτεραι and the Sicilian μαλακώτεραι just because the
latter “lowered the pitch” (ἐχάλασαν) of the doctrine that this is
always so (τὸ ἀεὶ ταῦτα οὕτως ἔχειν).
Nor is there anything in Aristotle to set against Plato’s emphatic
statement. We have seen that the passage in which he speaks of him along
with Empedokles as holding that the heavens were alternately in one
condition and in another refers not to the world in general, but to
fire, which Aristotle identified with the substance of his own “first
heaven.”[405] It is also quite consistent with our interpretation when
he says that all things at one time or another become fire. This does
not necessarily mean that they all become fire at the same time, but is
merely a statement of the undoubted Herakleitean doctrine of the upward
and downward path.[406]
Footnote 405:
See above, p. 177, _n._ 401.
Footnote 406:
_Phys._ Γ 5, 205 a 3 (_Met._ Κ, 10. 1067 a 4), ὥσπερ Ἡράκλειτός φησιν
ἅπαντα γίνεσθαί ποτε πῦρ. Even in his fifth edition (p. 691) Zeller
translates this _es werde alles dereinst zu Feuer werden_; but that
would require γενήσεσθαι. Nor is there anything in his suggestion that
ἅπαντα (“not merely πάντα”) implies that all things become fire at
once. In Aristotle’s day, there was no distinction of meaning between
πᾶς and ἅπας. Even if he had said σύμπαντα, we could not press it.
What is really noticeable is the present infinitive γίνεσθαι which
surely suggests a continuous process, not a series of conflagrations.
The only clear statements to the effect that Herakleitos taught the
doctrine of a general conflagration are posterior to the rise of
Stoicism. It is unnecessary to enumerate them, as there is no doubt
about their meaning. The Christian apologists too were interested in the
idea of a final conflagration, and reproduce the Stoic view. The curious
thing, however, is that there was a difference of opinion on the subject
even among the Stoics. In one place, Marcus Aurelius says: “So that all
these things are taken up into the Reason of the universe, whether by a
periodical conflagration or a renovation effected by external
exchanges.”[407] Indeed, there were some who said there was no general
conflagration at all in Herakleitos. “I hear all that,” Plutarch makes
one of his personages say, “from many people, and I see the Stoic
conflagration spreading over the poems of Hesiod, just as it does over
the writings of Herakleitos and the verses of Orpheus.”[408] We see from
this that the question was debated, and we should therefore expect that
any statement of Herakleitos which could settle it would be quoted over
and over again. It is highly significant that not a single quotation of
the kind can be produced.
Footnote 407:
Marcus Aurelius, x. 7, ὥστε καὶ ταῦτα ἀναληφθῆναι εἰς τὸν τοῦ ὅλου
λόγον, εἴτε κατὰ περίοδον ἐκπυρουμένου, εἴτε ἀιδίοις ἀμοιβαῖς
ἀνανεουμένου. The ἀμοιβαί are specifically Herakleitean, and the
statement is the more remarkable as Marcus elsewhere follows the usual
Stoic interpretation.
Footnote 408:
Plut. _de def. orac._ 415 f, καὶ ὁ Κλεόμβροτος, Ἀκούω ταῦτ’, ἔφη,
πολλῶν καὶ ὁρῶ τὴν Στωικὴν ἐκπύρωσιν ὥσπερ τὰ Ἡρακλείτου καὶ Ὀρφέως
ἐπινεμομένην ἔπη οὕτω καὶ τὰ Ἡσιόδου καὶ συνεξάπτουσαν. As Zeller
admits (p. 693 n.), this proves that some opponents of the Stoic
ἐκπύρωσις tried to withdraw the support of Herakleitos from it. Could
they have done so if Herakleitos had said anything about it, or would
not some one have produced a decisive quotation? We may be sure that,
if any one had, it would have been reiterated _ad nauseam_, for the
indestructibility of the world was one of the great questions of the
day.
On the contrary, the absence of anything to show that Herakleitos spoke
of a general conflagration only becomes more patent when we turn to the
few fragments which are supposed to prove it. The favourite is fr. 24,
where we are told that Herakleitos said Fire was Want and Surfeit. That
is just in his manner, and it has a perfectly intelligible meaning on
our interpretation, which is further confirmed by fr. 36. On the other
hand, it seems distinctly artificial to understand the Surfeit as
referring to the fact that fire has burnt everything else up, and still
more so to interpret Want as meaning that fire, or most of it, has
turned into a world. The next is fr. 26, where we read that fire in its
advance will judge and convict all things. There is nothing in this,
however, to suggest that fire will judge all things at once rather than
in turn, and, indeed, the phraseology reminds us of the advance of fire
and water which we have seen reason for attributing to Herakleitos, but
which is expressly said to be limited to a certain maximum.[409] These
appear to be the only passages which the Stoics and the Christian
apologists could discover, and, whether our interpretation of them is
right or wrong, it is surely obvious that they cannot bear the weight of
their conclusion, and that there was certainly nothing more definite to
be found.
Footnote 409:
Περὶ διαίτης, i. 3, ἐν μέρει δὲ ἑκάτερον κρατεῖ καὶ κρατεῖται ἐς τὸ
μήκιστον καὶ ἐλάχιστον ὡς ἀνυστόν.
It is much easier to find fragments which are on the face of them
inconsistent with a general conflagration. The “measures” of fr. 20 and
fr. 29 must be the same thing, and they must surely be interpreted in
the light of fr. 23. If this be so, fr. 20, and more especially fr. 29,
directly contradict the idea of a general conflagration. “The sun will
not overstep his measures.”[410] Secondly, the metaphor of “exchange,”
which is applied to the transformations of fire in fr. 22, points in the
same direction. When gold is given in exchange for wares and wares for
gold, the sum or “measure” of each remains constant, though they change
owners. All the wares and gold do not come into the same hands. In the
same way, when anything becomes fire, something of equal amount must
cease to be fire, if the “exchange” is to be a just one; and that it
will be just, we are assured by the watchfulness of the Erinyes (fr.
29), who see to it that the sun does not take more than he gives. Of
course there is, as we have seen, a certain variation; but this is
strictly confined within limits, and is compensated in the long run by a
variation in the other direction. Thirdly, fr. 43, in which Herakleitos
blames Homer for desiring the cessation of strife, is very conclusive.
The cessation of strife would mean that all things should take the
upward or downward path at the same time, and cease to “run in opposite
directions.” If they all took the upward path, we should have a general
conflagration. Now, if Herakleitos had himself held that this was the
appointment of fate, would he have been likely to upbraid Homer for
desiring so necessary a consummation?[411] Fourthly, we note that in fr.
20 it is _this_ world,[412] and not merely the “ever-living fire,” which
is said to be eternal; and it appears also that its eternity depends
upon the fact that it is always kindling and always going out in the
same “measures,” or that an encroachment in one direction is compensated
by a subsequent encroachment in the other. Lastly, Lassalle’s argument
from the concluding sentence of the passage from the Περὶ διαίτης,
quoted above, is really untouched by Zeller’s objection, that it cannot
be Herakleitean because it implies that all things are fire and water.
It does not imply this, but only that _man_, like the heavenly bodies,
oscillates between fire and water; and that is just what Herakleitos
taught. It does not appear either that the measures of earth varied at
all. Now, in this passage we read that neither fire nor water can
prevail completely, and a very good reason is given for this, a reason
too which is in striking agreement with the other views of
Herakleitos.[413] And, indeed, it is not easy to see how, in accordance
with these views, the world could ever recover from a general
conflagration if such a thing were to take place. The whole process
depends, so far as we can see, on the fact that Surfeit is also Want,
or, in other words, that an advance of fire increases the moist
exhalation, while an advance of water deprives the fire of the power to
cause evaporation. The conflagration, though it lasted but for a
moment,[414] would destroy the opposite tension on which the rise of a
new world depends, and then motion would become impossible.
Footnote 410:
If any one doubts that this is really the meaning of the “measures,”
let him compare the use of the word by Diogenes of Apollonia, fr. 3.
Footnote 411:
This is just the argument which Plato uses in the _Phaedo_ (72 c) to
prove the necessity of ἀνταπόδοσις, and the whole series of arguments
in that passage is distinctly Herakleitean in character.
Footnote 412:
However we understand the term κόσμος here, the meaning is the same.
Indeed, if we suppose with Bernays that it means “order,” the argument
in the text will be all the stronger. In no sense of the word could a
κόσμος survive the ἐκπύρωσις, and the Stoics accordingly said the
κόσμος was φθαρτός.
Footnote 413:
Περὶ διαίτης, i. 3 (see above, p. 167, _n._ 383, οὐδέτερον γὰρ
κρατῆσαι παντελῶς δύναται διὰ τάδε· τό <τε> πῦρ ἐπεξιὸν ἐπὶ τὸ ἔσχατον
τοῦ ὕδατος ἐπιλείπει ἡ τροφή· ἀποτρέπεται οὖν ὅθεν μέλλει τρέφεσθαι·
τὸ ὕδωρ τε ἐπεξιὸν τοῦ πυρὸς ἐπὶ τὸ ἔσχατον, ἐπιλείπει ἡ κίνησις·
ἵσταται οὖν ἐν τούτῳ, ὅταν δὲ στῇ, οὐκέτι ἐγκρατές ἐστιν, ἀλλ’ ἤδη τῷ
ἐμπίπτοντι πυρὶ ἐς τῆν τροφὴν καταναλίσκεται· οὐδέτερον δὲ διὰ ταῦτα
δύναται κρατῆσαι παντελῶς, εἰ δέ ποτε κρατηθείη καὶ ὁπότερον, οὐδὲν ἂν
εἴη τῶν νῦν ἐόντων ὥσπερ ἔχει νῦν· οὕτω δὲ ἐχόντων ἀεὶ ἔσται τὰ αὐτὰ
καὶ οὐδέτερον οὐδαμὰ ἐπιλείψει.
Footnote 414:
In his note on fr. 66 (= 26 Byw.), Diels seeks to minimise the
difficulty of the ἐκπύρωσις by saying that it is only a little one,
and can last but a moment; but the contradiction noted above remains
all the same. Diels holds that Herakleitos was “dark only in form,”
and that “he himself was perfectly clear as to the sense and scope of
his ideas” (_Herakleitos_, p. i.). To which I would add that he was
probably called “the Dark” just because the Stoics sometimes found it
hard to read their own ideas into his words.
[Sidenote: Strife and “harmony.”]
79. We are now in a position to understand more clearly the law of
strife or opposition which manifests itself in the “upward and downward
path.” At any given moment, each of the three forms of matter, Fire,
Water, and Earth, is made up of two equal portions,—subject, of course,
to the oscillation described above,—one of which is taking the upward
and the other the downward path. Now, it is just the fact that the two
halves of everything are being “drawn in opposite directions,” this
“opposite tension,” that “keeps things together,” and maintains them in
an equilibrium which can only be disturbed temporarily and within
certain limits. It thus forms the “hidden attunement” of the universe
(fr. 47), though, in another aspect of it, it is Strife. Bernays has
pointed out that the word ἁρμονία meant originally “structure,” and the
illustration of the bow and the lyre shows that this idea was present.
On the other hand, that taken from the concord of high and low notes
shows that the musical sense of the word, namely, an octave, was not
wholly absent. As to the “bow and the lyre” (fr. 45), I think that
Professor Campbell has best brought out the point of the simile. “As the
arrow leaves the string,” he says, “the hands are pulling opposite ways
to each other, and to the different parts of the bow (cf. Plato, _Rep._
4. 439); and the sweet note of the lyre is due to a similar tension and
retention. The secret of the universe is the same.”[415] War, then, is
the father and king of all things, in the world as in human society (fr.
44); and Homer’s wish that strife might cease was really a prayer for
the destruction of the world (fr. 43).
Footnote 415:
Campbell’s _Theaetetus_ (2nd ed.), p. 244. See above, p. 150, _n._
347. Bernays explained the phrase as referring to the _shape_ of the
bow and lyre, but this is much less likely. Wilamowitz’s
interpretation is substantially the same as Campbell’s. “Es ist mit
der Welt wie mit dem Bogen, den man auseinanderzieht, damit er
zusammenschnellt, wie mit der Saite, die man ihrer Spannung
entgegenziehen muss, damit sie klingt” (_Lesebuch_, ii. p. 129).
We know from Philo that Herakleitos supported his theory of the
attainment of harmony through strife by a multitude of examples; and, as
it happens, some of these can be recovered. There is a remarkable
agreement between a passage of this kind in the pseudo-Aristotelian
treatise, entitled _The Kosmos_, and the Hippokratean work to which we
have already referred. That the authors of both drew from the same
source, namely, Herakleitos, is probable in itself, and is made
practically certain by the fact that this agreement extends in part to
the _Letters of Herakleitos_, which, though spurious, were certainly
composed by some one who had access to the original work. The argument
was that men themselves act just in the same way as Nature, and it is
therefore surprising that they do not recognise the laws by which she
works. The painter produces his harmonious effects by the contrast of
colours, the musician by that of high and low notes. “If one were to
make all things alike, there would be no delight in them.” There are
many similar examples in the Hippokratean tract, some of which must
certainly come from Herakleitos; but it is not easy to separate them
from the later additions.[416]
Footnote 416:
See on all this Patin’s _Quellenstudien zu Heraklit_ (1881). The
sentence (Περὶ διαίτης, i. 5): καὶ τὰ μὲν πρήσσουσιν οὐκ οἴδασιν, ἃ δὲ
οὐ πρήσσουσι δοκέουσιν εἰδέναι· καὶ τὰ μὲν ὁρέουσιν οὐ γινώσκουσιν,
ἀλλ’ ὅμως αὐτοῖσι πάντα γίνεται ... καὶ ἃ βούλονται καὶ ἃ μὴ
βούλονται, has the true Herakleitean ring. This, too, can hardly have
had another author: “They trust to their eyes rather than to their
understanding, though their eyes are not fit to judge even of the
things that are seen. But I speak these things from understanding.”
These words are positively grotesque in the mouth of the medical
compiler; but we are accustomed to hear such things from the Ephesian.
Other examples which may be Herakleitean are the image of the two men
sawing wood—“one pushes, the other pulls”—and the illustration from
the art of writing.
[Sidenote: Correlation of opposites.]
80. There are a number of Herakleitean fragments which form a class by
themselves, and are among the most striking of all the utterances that
have come down to us. Their common characteristic is, that they assert
in the most downright way the identity of various things which are
usually regarded as opposites. The clue to their meaning is to be found
in the account already given of the assertion that day and night are
one. We have seen that Herakleitos meant to say, not that day was night
or that night was day, but that they were two sides of the same process,
namely, the oscillation of the “measures” of fire and water, and that
neither would be possible without the other. Any explanation that can be
given of night will also be an explanation of day, and _vice versa_; for
it will be an account of that which is common to both, and manifests
itself now as one and now as the other. Moreover, it is just because it
has manifested itself in the one form that it must next appear in the
other; for this is required by the law of compensation or Justice.
This is only a particular application of the universal principle that
the primary fire is one even in its division. It itself is, even in its
unity, both surfeit and want, war and peace (fr. 36). In other words,
the “satiety” which makes fire pass into other forms, which makes it
seek “rest in change” (frs. 82, 83), and “hide itself” (fr. 10) in the
“hidden attunement” of opposition, is only one side of the process. The
other is the “want” which leads it to consume the bright vapour as fuel.
The upward path is nothing without the downward (fr. 69). If either were
to cease, the other would cease too, and the world would disappear; for
it takes both to make an apparently stable reality.
All other utterances of the kind are to be explained in the same way. If
there were no cold, there would be no heat; for a thing can only grow
warm if, and in so far as, it is already cold. And the same thing
applies to the opposition of wet and dry (fr. 39). These, it will be
observed, are just the two primary oppositions of Anaximander, and
Herakleitos is showing that the war between them is really peace, for it
is the common element in them (fr. 62) which appears as strife, and that
very strife is justice, and not, as Anaximander had taught, an injustice
which they commit one against the other, and which must be expiated by a
reabsorption of both in their common ground.[417] The strife itself is
the common ground (fr. 62), and is eternal.
Footnote 417:
Chap. I. § 16.
The most startling of these sayings is that which affirms that good and
evil are the same (fr. 57). This does not mean in the least, however,
that good is evil or that evil is good, but simply that they are the two
inseparable halves of one and the same thing. A thing can become good
only in so far as it is already evil, and evil only in so far as it is
already good, and everything depends on the contrast. The illustration
given in fr. 58 shows this clearly. Torture, one would say, was an evil,
and yet it is made a good by the presence of another evil, namely,
disease; as is shown by the fact that surgeons expect a fee for
inflicting it upon their patients. Justice, on the other hand, which is
a good, would be altogether unknown were it not for the existence of
injustice, which is an evil (fr. 60). And that is why it is not good for
men to get everything they wish (fr. 104). Just as the cessation of
strife in the world would mean its destruction, so the disappearance of
hunger, disease, and weariness would mean the disappearance of
satisfaction, health, and rest.
This leads to a theory of relativity which prepares the way for the
doctrine of Protagoras, that “Man is the measure of all things.”[418]
Sea-water is good for fish and bad for men (fr. 52), and so with many
other things. At the same time, Herakleitos is not a believer in
absolute relativity. The process of the world is not merely a circle,
but an “upward and downward path.” At the upper end, where the two paths
meet, we have the pure fire, in which, as there is no separation, there
is no relativity. We are told expressly that, while to man some things
are evil and some things are good, all things are good to God (fr. 61).
Now by God there is no doubt that Herakleitos meant Fire. He also calls
it the “one wise,” and perhaps said that it “knows all things.” There
can hardly be any question that what he meant to say was that in it the
opposition and relativity which are universal in the world disappear. It
is doubtless to this that frs. 96, 97, and 98 refer.
Footnote 418:
Plato’s exposition of the relativity of knowledge in the _Theaetetus_
(152 d sqq.) can hardly go back to Herakleitos himself, but is meant
to show how Herakleiteanism might naturally give rise to such a
doctrine. If the soul is a stream and things are a stream, then of
course knowledge is relative. Very possibly the later Herakleiteans
had worked out the theory in this direction, but in the days of
Herakleitos himself the problem of knowledge had not yet arisen.
[Sidenote: The Wise.]
81. Herakleitos speaks of “wisdom” or the “wise” in two senses. We have
seen already that he said wisdom was “something apart from everything
else” (fr. 18), meaning by it the perception of the unity of the many;
and he also applies the term to that unity itself regarded as the
“thought that directs the course of all things.” This is synonymous with
the pure fire which is not differentiated into two parts, one taking the
upward and the other the downward path. That alone has wisdom; the
partial things we see have not. We ourselves are only wise in so far as
we are fiery (fr. 74).
[Sidenote: Theology.]
82. With certain reservations, Herakleitos was prepared to call the one
Wisdom by the name of Zeus. Such, at least, appears to be the meaning of
fr. 65. What these reservations were, it is easy to guess. It is not, of
course, to be pictured in the form of a man. In saying this, Herakleitos
would only have been repeating what had already been laid down by
Anaximander and Xenophanes. He agrees further with Xenophanes in holding
that this “god,” if it is to be called so, is one; but his polemic
against popular religion was directed rather against the rites and
ceremonies themselves than their mere mythological outgrowth. He gives a
list (fr. 124) of some of the most characteristic religious figures of
his time, and the context in which the fragment is quoted shows that he
in some way threatened them with the wrath to come. He comments upon the
absurdity of praying to images (fr. 126), and the strange idea that
blood-guiltiness can be washed out by the shedding of blood (fr. 130).
He seems also to have said that it was absurd to celebrate the worship
of Dionysos by cheerful and licentious ceremonies, while Hades was
propitiated by gloomy rites (fr. 127). According to the mystic doctrine
itself, the two were really one; and the one Wisdom ought to be
worshipped in its integrity.
The few fragments which deal with theology and religion hardly suggest
to us that Herakleitos was in sympathy with the religious revival of the
time, and yet we have been asked to consider his system “in the light of
the idea of the mysteries.”[419] Our attention is called to the fact
that he was “king” of Ephesos, that is, priest of the branch of the
Eleusinian mysteries established in that city, which was also connected
in some way with the worship of Artemis or the Great Mother.[420] These
statements may be true; but, even if they are, what follows? We ought
surely to have learnt from Lobeck by this time that there was no “idea”
in the mysteries at all; and on this point the results of recent
anthropological research have abundantly confirmed those of philological
and historical inquiry.
Footnote 419:
E. Pfleiderer, _Die Philosophie des Heraklit von Ephesus im Lichte der
Mysterienidee_ (1886).
Footnote 420:
Antisthenes (the writer of _Successions_) _ap._ Diog. ix. 6 (R. P.
31). Cf. Strabo, xiv. p. 633 (R. P. 31 b).
[Sidenote: Ethics of Herakleitos.]
83. The moral teaching of Herakleitos has sometimes been regarded as an
anticipation of the “common-sense” theory of Ethics.[421] The “common”
upon which Herakleitos insists is, nevertheless, something very
different from common sense, for which, indeed, he had the greatest
possible contempt (fr. 111). It is, in fact, his strongest objection to
“the many,” that they live each in his own world (fr. 95), as if they
had a private wisdom of their own (fr. 92); and public opinion is
therefore just the opposite of “the common.”
Footnote 421:
Köstlin, _Gesch. d. Ethik_, i. pp. 160 sqq.
The Ethics of Herakleitos are to be regarded as a corollary of his
anthropological and cosmological views. Their chief requirement is that
we keep our souls dry, and thus assimilate them to the one Wisdom, which
is fire. That is what is really “common,” and the greatest fault is to
act like men asleep (fr. 94), that is, by letting our souls grow moist,
to cut ourselves off from the fire in the world. We do not know what
were the consequences which Herakleitos deduced from his rule that we
must hold fast to what is common, but it is easy to see what their
nature must have been. The wise man would not try to secure good without
its correlative evil. He would not seek for rest without exertion, nor
expect to enjoy contentment without first suffering discontent. He would
not complain that he had to take the bad with the good, but would
consistently look at things as a whole.
Herakleitos prepared the way for the Stoic world-state by comparing “the
common” to the laws of a city. And these are even more than a type of
the divine law: they are imperfect embodiments of it. They cannot,
however, exhaust it altogether; for in all human affairs there is an
element of relativity (fr. 91). “Man is a baby compared to God” (fr.
97). Such as they are, however, the city must fight for them as for its
walls; and, if it has the good fortune to possess a citizen with a dry
soul, he is worth ten thousand (fr. 113); for in him alone is “the
common” embodied.