Herakleitos taught the underlying unity of all things. On the
word λόγος (meaning both discourse and the truth the discourse
contains), _v._ Zeller, i. 630, n. 1.
2. This truth, though it always exists, men do not understand, as well
before they hear it as when they hear it for the first time. For although
all things happen in accordance with this truth, men seem unskilled
indeed when they make trial of words and matters such as I am setting
forth, in my effort to discriminate each thing according to its nature,
and to tell what its state is. But other men fail to notice what they do
when awake, in the same manner that they forget what they do when asleep.
Hippolytos quotes this passage with reference to a universal
all-pervading reason.
3. Those who hear without the power to understand are like deaf men; the
proverb holds true of them—‘Present, they are absent.’
Quoted by Clement in illustration of Ev. Luc. xiv. 35.
4. Eyes and ears are bad witnesses for men, since their souls lack
understanding.
Sextus Emp. interprets this as meaning ‘rude souls trust the
irrational senses.’ Cf. Zeller, i. 716, n. 5.
5. Most men do not understand such things as they are wont to meet with;
nor by learning do they come to know them, though they think they do.
6. They know not how to listen, nor how to speak.
Clement compares this with Eccles. vi. 35.
7. If you do not hope, you will not find that which is not hoped for;
since it is difficult to discover and impossible to attain.
Clement compares this with Isaias vii. 9. With Gomperz’s
punctuation: ‘Unless you expect the unexpected, you will not
find truth; for, &c.’
8. Seekers for gold dig much earth, and find little gold.
9. Controversy.
10. Nature loves to hide.
‘So we worship the creator of nature, because the knowledge of
him is difficult.’
11. The Lord [whose is the oracle] at Delphi neither speaks nor conceals,
but gives a sign.
12. And the Sibyl with raving mouth, uttering words solemn, unadorned,
and unsweetened, reaches with her voice a thousand years because of the
god in her.
Quoted by Plutarch to show that allurements of sense are out of
place in the holy responses of the god. Both this fragment and
the preceding seem originally to have referred to the nature of
Herakleitos’s teaching; it is obscure, and yet divine.
13. What can be seen, heard, and learned, this I prize.
Hippolytos contrasts this with Fr. 47, and in this connection
the translation of Schuster, ‘Am I to prize these (invisible)
things above what can be seen, heard, learned?’ seems the more
natural.
14. (For this is characteristic of the present age, when, inasmuch as
all lands and seas may be crossed by man, it would no longer be fitting
to depend on the witness of poets and mythographers, as our ancestors
generally did), ‘bringing forth untrustworthy witnesses to confirm
disputed points,’ in the words of Herakleitos.
15. Eyes are more exact witnesses than ears.
Cf. Bernays, _Rhein. Mus._ ix. 261 sqq.
16. Much learning does not teach one to have understanding; else it would
have taught Hesiod, and Pythagoras, and again Xenophanes, and Hekataios.
17. Pythagoras, son of Mnesarchos, prosecuted investigations more than
any other man, and [selecting these treatises] he made a wisdom of his
own—much learning and bad art.
18. No one of all whose discourses I have heard has arrived at this
result: the recognition that wisdom is apart from all other things.
V. Teichmüller, i. 109 ff. on the idea of _katharsis_ in
Herakleitos.
19. Wisdom is one thing: [to understand the intelligence by which all
things are steered through all things]; it is willing and it is unwilling
to be called by the name Zeus.
The first two clauses follow Fr. 16 in Diog. Laer.; the idea in
parenthesis often appears in Stoic writers.
20. This order, the same for all things, no one of gods or men has made,
but it always was, and is, and ever shall be, an ever-living fire,
kindling according to fixed measure, and extinguished according to fixed
measure.
Zeller, i. 645 n. 1, discusses the various interpretations, and
prefers to translate the first phrase ‘This world, the same for
all,’ _i.e._ including gods and men.
21. The transformations of fire are, first of all, sea; and of the sea
one half is earth, and the other half is lightning flash.
Zeller, i. 647 n. 1, regards πρηστήρ as identical with κεραυνός
of Fr. 28. Burnett, _Early Greek Philosophy_, p. 153 n. 53,
suggests fiery stormcloud, Seneca’s _igneus turbo_.
22. All things are exchanged for fire, and fire for all things; as wares
are exchanged for gold, and gold for wares.
23. (The earth) is poured out as sea, and measures the same amount as
existed before it became earth.
V. Lassalle, ii. 63; Heinze, _Logos_, p. 25; Schuster, p. 129;
Zeller, i. 690 n. 1.
24. Want and satiety.
Context: Fire is intelligent and the governing cause of all
things. Herakleitos calls it want and satiety. In his opinion
want is the process of arrangement, and satiety the process of
conflagration.
25. Fire lives in the death of earth, and air lives in the death of fire;
water lives in the death of air, and earth in that of water.
Not accepted by Zeller, i. 676, who regards it as a Stoic
version of Fr. 68.
26. Fire coming upon all things will test them, and lay hold of them.
Burnett suggests that the reference to a judgment (κρινέει)
was inserted by Hippolytos to obtain the Christian idea of a
judgment.
27. How could one escape the notice of that which never sets?
Cf. Schuster, p. 184; Zeller, i. 649 n. 2; Teichmüller, i. 184.
28. The thunderbolt directs the course of all things.
Cf. Fr. 19.
29. The sun will not overstep his bounds; if he does, the Erinnyes,
allies of justice, will find him out.
30. The limit of the evening and the morning is the Bear; and opposite
the Bear is the boundary of bright Zeus.
Strabo regards this as a Homeric expression for the fact that
the northern circle is the boundary of rising and setting. Zeus
_aithrios_ means the clear heavens.
31. If there were no sun, it would be night.
32. The sun is new every day.
33. (Herakleitos and Demokritos bear witness that Thales was an
astronomer, and predicted eclipses, etc.)
34. The seasons bring all things.
‘Time is not motion of a simple sort, but, so to speak, motion
in an order which has measure and limits and periods. The sun,
guardian of these, ... appoints and announces the seasons,
which, according to Herakleitos, bring all things.’
35. Hesiod is the teacher of most men; they suppose that his knowledge
was very extensive, when in fact he did not know night and day, for they
are one.
36. God is day and night, winter and summer, war and peace, satiety and
hunger; but he assumes different forms, just as when incense is mingled
with incense; every one gives him the name he pleases.
37. If all things should become smoke, then perception would be by the
nostrils.
Arist. ‘Some think that odour is a smoky exhalation, ... and
that every one is brought in contact with this in smelling. So
Herakleitos says that if all things,’ etc. The reference is
originally to the conflagration of the universe [ἐκπύρωσις].
38. Souls smell in Hades.
Plutarch adds the reason: Because they retain a perception of
what is fiery.
39. Cool things become warm, the warm grows cool; the wet dries, the
parched becomes wet.
40. It scatters and brings together; it approaches and departs.
This follows the next fragment, as illustrating change.
41-42. You could not step twice in the same rivers; for other and yet
other waters are ever flowing on.
43. Herakleitos blamed Homer for saying: Would that strife might perish
from among gods and men! For then, said he, all things would pass away.
Aristotle assigns a different reason: For there could be no
harmony without sharps and flats, nor living beings without
male and female, which are contraries.
44. War is father of all and king of all; and some he made gods and some
men, some slaves and some free.
45. Men do not understand how that which draws apart agrees with itself;
harmony lies in the bending back, as for instance of the bow and of the
lyre.
V. Bernays, _Rhein. Mus._ vii. p. 94. Reading παλίντονος from
fragment 56, we obtain the meaning ‘opposite tension’ more
distinctly.
46. Opposition unites. From what draws apart results the most beautiful
harmony. All things take place by strife.
Quoted by Aristotle as an illustration of the search for a
deeper principle, more in accordance with nature.
47. Hidden harmony is better than manifest.
48. Let us not make rash conjectures about the greatest things.
49. Men who desire wisdom must be learners of very many things.
50. For woolcarders the straight and the crooked path is one and the same.
51. Asses would rather have refuse than gold.
52. The sea is the purest and the foulest water; it is drinkable and
healthful for fishes; but for men it is unfit to drink and hurtful.
Quoted by Hippolytos as an example of Herakleitos’
identification of opposites.
53-54. Swine like to wash in the mire; barnyard fowls in the dust.
55. Every beast is tended by blows.
Cf. Zeller, i. p. 724: ‘Every creature feeds on earth.’
(56. Identical with 45.)
57. Good and bad are the same.
58. (Good and bad are one; at any rate, as Herakleitos says) physicians,
who cut and burn and in every way torment the sick, complain that they do
not receive any adequate recompense from them.
59. Thou shouldst unite things whole and things not whole, that which
tends to unite and that which tends to separate, the harmonious and the
discordant; from all things arises the one, and from the one all things.
60. They would not have known the name of justice, were it not for these
things.
According to the context in Clement ‘these things’ refers to
injustice.
61. (God, ordering things as they ought to be, perfects all things in the
harmony of the whole, as Herakleitos says that) for god all things are
fair and good and just, but men suppose that some are unjust and others
just.
Cf. Hippocr. de Diaeta (Bernays, Herakl. 22; RP 37 c)
Accordingly the arrangements (laws) which men have made are
never constant, either when they are right, or when they are
not right; but the arrangements the gods have made are always
right, both those which are right and those which are not
right; so great is the difference between them.
62. Men should know that war is general and that justice is strife; all
things arise and [pass away] through strife.
63. For they are absolutely destined....
64. All the things we see when awake are death, and all the things we see
when asleep are sleep.
For various interpretations, v. Teichmüller, i. 97 sq.; Zeller,
i. 715; Patin, _Einheitslehre_, 19.
65. v. 19.
66. The name of the bow is life, but its work is death.
A similar play on words is found in Fr. 101.
67. Gods are mortals, men are immortals, each living in the others’ death
and dying in the others’ life.
Cf. Sext. Emp. _Pyrrh._ iii. 230, R. P. 38.
68. For to souls it is death to become water, and for water it is death
to become earth; but water is formed from earth, and from water, soul.
Clement quotes this as borrowed from Orpheus; and Hippolytos
also found it in the poets.
69. Upward, downward, the way is one and the same.
70. Beginning and end are common (to both ways).
71. The limits of the soul you could not discover, though traversing
every path.
72. It is a delight to souls to become wet.
73. Whenever a man gets drunk, he is led about by a beardless boy,
stumbling, not knowing whither he goes, for his soul is wet.
74. The dry soul is wisest and best.
Byw. 75. A dry beam is the wisest and best soul; Fr. 76. Where
the earth is dry, the soul is wisest and best.
If Fr. 74 is the genuine form, the corruptions are very
early. We cannot, however, regard all three forms as
genuine, and it is at least doubtful whether Fr. 75
expresses a Herakleitean idea.
Zeller and others add to Fr. 74 the rest of the phrase in
Plutarch, ‘flashing through the body as lightning through
the cloud.’
77. Man, like a light in the night, is kindled and put out.
78. Life and death, and waking and sleeping, and youth and old age, are
the same; for the latter change and are the former, and the former change
back to the latter.
79. Lifetime is a child playing draughts; the kingdom is a child’s.
Clement understood αἰών to be Zeus; Hippolytos made it
equivalent to αἰώνιος, the eternal (king).
80. I inquired of myself.
The translation follows the sense in Diogenes; in Plutarch it
is parallel with the Delphic oracle, ‘I have sought to know
myself.’
81. In the same rivers we step and we do not step; we are and we are not.
Cf. Fr. 41.
82. It is weariness to toil at the same things, and to be subject to them.
83. Changing it finds rest.
84. Even a potion separates into its ingredients when it is not stirred.
85. Corpses are more fit to be thrown away than dung.
86. Being born they wish to live and to meet death, [or rather to find
rest,] and they leave behind children to die.
87. Thirty years make a generation, according to Herakleitos.
88. Not without reason does Herakleitos call a month a
generation. 89. A man may become a grandfather in thirty years.
90. The sleeping are workmen (and fellow-workers) in what happens in the
world.
91. Understanding is common to all. It is necessary for those who speak
with intelligence to hold fast to the common element of all, as a city
holds fast to law, and much more strongly. For all human laws are
nourished by one which is divine, and it has power so much as it will;
and it suffices for all things and more than suffices.
92. And though reason is common, most people live as though they had an
understanding peculiar to themselves.
93. With what they most constantly associate, with this they are at
variance.
94. It is not meet to act and speak like men asleep.
Cf. Fr. 2 and 90.
95. They that are awake have one world in common, but of the sleeping
each turns aside into a world of his own.
96. For human nature has not wisdom, but divine nature has.
97. Man is called a baby by god, even as a child is by man.
The translation is Burnett’s, following the suggestion of
Petersen in _Hermes_ xiv. 1879, p. 304.
Fr. 98. And does not Herakleitos, whom you bring forward, say
this very thing, that the wisest of men will appear as an ape
before God, both in wisdom and in beauty and in all other
respects? Fr. 99. You are ignorant, sir, of that fine saying
of Herakleitos, that the most beautiful of apes is ugly in
comparison with beings of another kind, and the most beautiful
of earthen pots is ugly in comparison with maidenkind, as
Hippias the wise man says.
100. The people ought to fight for their law as for a wall.
101. Greater deaths gain greater portions.
102. Gods and men honour those slain in battle.
103. Wantonness must be quenched more than a conflagration.
104. It is not good for men to have whatever they want. Disease makes
health sweet and good; hunger, satiety; toil, rest.
105. It is hard to contend with passion; for whatever it desires to get
it buys at the cost of soul.
106. It is the part of all men to know themselves and to be
temperate. 107. To be temperate is the greatest virtue; and it
is wisdom to speak the truth and to act according to nature
with understanding.
108. It is better to conceal stupidity, but it is an effort in time of
relaxation and over the wine.
109. It is better to conceal ignorance than to put it forth into the
midst.
110. It is law to obey the counsel of one.
111. For what sense or understanding have they? They follow the bards
and employ the crowd as their teacher, not knowing that many are bad and
few good. For the very best choose one thing before all others, immortal
glory among mortals, while the masses eat their fill like cattle.
112. In Priene was born Bias son of Teutamas, who is of more account than
the rest.
Diogenes adds the apothegm ‘most men are bad.’
113. To me one man is ten thousand if he be the best.
114. The Ephesians deserve to be hanged, every one that is a man grown,
and the youth to abandon the city, for they cast out Hermodoros the best
man among them, saying:—Let no one among us be best, and if one be best,
let him be so elsewhere and among others.
115. Dogs also bark at those they do not know.
116. As the result of incredulity (divine things) miss being known.
Either because men are incredulous, or the things incredible.
Cf. Zeller, _Phil. Gr._ i.⁴ 574 A 2. Gomperz combined this with
fragment 10.
117. The fool is wont to be in a flutter at every word.
118. The most esteemed of those in estimation knows how to be on his
guard; yet truly justice shall overtake forgers of lies and witnesses to
them.
If the reference is to Homer, read πλάσσειν, ‘knows how to
create myths.’
119. (He used to say that) Homer deserved to be cast out of the lists and
flogged, and Archilochos likewise.
120. One day is equal to every other.
121. Character is a man’s guardian divinity.
122. There awaits men at death what they do not expect or think.
123. Then [it is necessary] that God raise them up, and that they become
guardians of the living and the dead.
Or adopting Sauppe’s conjectures in full ‘that he become a
watchful guardian....’
124. Night-walkers, wizards, bacchanals, revellers, sharers in the
mysteries.
125. For what are esteemed mysteries among men they celebrate in an
unholy way.
127. For if it were not to Dionysos that they made the procession and
sang the song with phallic symbols, their deeds would indeed be most
shameful; but Hades and Dionysos are the same, to whomever they go mad
and share the revel.
128. I distinguish two kinds of sacrifices; those of men
altogether purified, which would occur rarely, as Herakleitos
says, in the case of a single individual, or of some very few
men easily counted; secondly, those that are material and
corporeal and composite through change, such as are in harmony
with those who are still restrained by the body.
129. (Herakleitos fittingly called religious rites) _cures_ (for the
soul).
130. They purify themselves by defiling themselves with blood, as if one
who had stepped into the mud were to wash it off with mud. If any one
of men should observe him doing so, he would think he was insane. And
to these images they pray, just as if one were to converse with men’s
houses, for they know not what gods and heroes are.
130a. If they are gods, why do ye lament them? And if ye lament them, no
longer consider them gods.
The fragment in the critical notes reads: ‘To images of gods
they pray, to those who do not hear, as though they might hear;
to those who do not answer, as though they might not make
request.’
131. All things are full of souls and of divine spirits.
132. He was wont to say that false opinion is a sacred disease, and that
vision is deceitful.
133. Each one who has come to be esteemed without due grounds, ought to
hide his face.
134. False opinion of progress is the stoppage of progress.
135. Their education is a second sun to those that have been educated.
136. As food is timely in famine, so opportune favour heals the need of
the soul.
137. The same one was wont to say that the shortest way to glory was to
become good.
138. Timaios wrote thus: So Pythagoras does not appear to have
discovered the true art of words, nor yet the one accused by
Herakleitos, but Herakleitos himself is the one who is the
pretender.
PASSAGES IN PLATO AND ARISTOTLE REFERRING TO HERAKLEITOS.
Plato, _Theaet._ 160 D. Homer, and Herakleitos, and the whole company
which say that all things are in motion and in a state of flux. Cf. 152 D
H.
_Kratylos_, 401 D. According to Herakleitos all things are in motion and
nothing abides. Cf. 402 A, and frag. 41; also 412 D, 440 C.
_Plato also alludes to fragments 32, 45, 98-99._
Aristotle: _Topica_ i. 11, 104 f 21. All things are in motion, according
to Herakleitos.
_Top._ viii. 5; 155 f 30. Wherefore those that hold different opinions,
as that good and bad are the same thing, as Herakleitos says, do not
grant that the opposite cannot coexist with itself; not as though
they did not think this to be the case, but because as followers of
Herakleitos they are obliged to speak as they do.
_Phys._ i. 2; 185 b 19. But still, if in the argument all things that
exist are one, as a cloak or a himation, it turns out that they are
stating the position of Herakleitos; for the same thing will apply to
good and bad, and to good and not-good, so that good and not-good, and
man and horse, will be the same; and they will not be arguing that all
things are one, but that they are nothing, and that the same thing
applies to such and to so much.
_Phys._ iii. 5; 205 a 3. As Herakleitos says that all things sometime
become fire.
_De coelo_ i. 10; 279 b 16. And others in their turn say that sometimes
combination is taking place, and at other times destruction, and that
this will always continue, as Empedokles of Agrigentum, and Herakleitos
of Ephesos.
_De anima_ i. 2; 405 a 25. And Herakleitos also says that the first
principle is soul, as it were a fiery exhalation, of which all other
things consist; for it is the least corporeal and always in a state of
flux, and the moving is known by the moving; and he agreed with most
thinkers in holding that things are in motion.
_De part anim._ i. 5; 645 a 17. And as Herakleitos is reported to have
said to strangers who wanted to meet him, who stopped when they entered
and saw him getting warm by an oven—for he bade them enter boldly, since,
said he, gods are here—so should one enter upon the investigation of
each of the animals without timidity, as there is in them all something
natural and beautiful.
_Met._ i. 3; 984 a 7. Hippasos of Metapontum and Herakleitos of Ephesos
call fire the first cause. Cf. 996 a 9, 1001 a 15.
_Met._ iii. 3; 1005 b 24. For it is impossible for any one to postulate
that the same thing is and is not, as some think Herakleitos says.
_Met._ iii. 5; 1010 a 13. V. Frag. 41-42, _supra_.
_Met._ iii. 7; 1012 a 24. For the word of Herakleitos, that all things
are and are not, seems to make all things true.
_Met._ x. 5; 1062 a 32. For one might ask Herakleitos himself after this
manner and speedily compel him to agree that it is never possible for
opposite statements to be true about the same things. Cf. 1063 b 24.
_Met._ xii. 4; 1078 b 12. For the doctrine of ideas is held by its
supporters because they are convinced by Herakleitos’s words in regard
to the truth, viz., that all things perceived by the senses are always
in a state of flux; so that if there is to be a science and a knowledge
of anything, it is necessary to assume the existence of other objects in
nature besides those that are perceived by sense, for there can be no
science of things in a state of flux.
_Eth._ ii. 3; 1105 a 8. It is harder to fight against pleasure than
against anger, as Herakleitos says.
_Eth._ vii. 3; 1146 b 30. For some believe their opinions no less
strongly than what they know by scientific procedure; and Herakleitos is
an example of this.
_Eth._ viii. 2; 1155 b 4. And Herakleitos says that opposition unites,
and that the most beautiful harmony results from opposites, and that all
things come into being through strife.
_Eth._ x. 5; 1176 a 6. As Herakleitos says, an ass would prefer refuse to
gold, for natural food is sweeter to asses than gold.
Sext. Emp. _adv. Math._ vii. 129. According to Herakleitos we
become intelligent when we get this divine reason by breathing
it in, and in sleep we are forgetful, but on waking we gain our
senses again. For in sleep since the pores of the senses are
closed, the mind in us is separated from what is akin to it in
what surrounds us, and its connection through pores is only
preserved like a sort of root; and being cut off it loses its
former power of memory; but when we wake it peeps out through
the pores of sense as through little doors, and entering into
connection with what surrounds us it regains the power of
reason.
PASSAGES REFERRING TO HERAKLEITOS IN THE ‘DOXOGRAPHISTS.’
Ar. Did. _Epit._ 39, 2; _Dox._ 471. Zeno as well as Herakleitos says that
the soul is a perceptive exhalation. The latter desiring to make it clear
that souls always gain mental faculties by giving forth exhalations,
likened them to rivers; and these are his words: (Fr. 42) ‘Other and yet
other waters are flowing on upon those who step in the same rivers.’