HERACLITUS.
1. RELATION OF THE HERACLITIC PRINCIPLE TO THE ELEATIC.—Being and
existence, the one and the many, could not be united by the principle of
the Eleatics; the Monism which they had striven for had resulted in an
ill-concealed Dualism. Heraclitus reconciled this contradiction by
affirming that being and not-being, the one and the many, existed at the
same time as the becoming. While the Eleatics could not extricate
themselves from the dilemma that the world is either being or not-being,
Heraclitus removes the difficulty by answering—it is neither being nor
not-being, because it is both.
2. HISTORICAL AND CHRONOLOGICAL.—Heraclitus, surnamed by later writers
the mystic, was born at Ephesus, and flourished about 500 B. C. His
period was subsequent to that of Xenophanes, though partially
cotemporary with that of Parmenides. He laid down his philosophical
thoughts in a writing “Concerning Nature,” of which we possess only
fragments. Its rapid transitions, its expressions so concise, and full
of meaning, the general philosophical peculiarity of Heraclitus, and the
antique character of the earliest prose writings, all combine to make
this work so difficult to be understood that it has long been a proverb.
Socrates said concerning it, that “what he understood of it was
excellent, and he had no doubt that what he did not understand was
equally good; but the book requires an expert swimmer.” Later Stoics and
Academicians have written commentaries upon it.
3. THE PRINCIPLE OF THE BECOMING.—The ancients unite in ascribing to
Heraclitus the principle that the totality of things should be conceived
in an eternal flow, in an uninterrupted movement and transformation, and
that all continuance of things is only appearance. “Into the same
stream,” so runs a saying of Heraclitus, “we descend, and at the same
time we do not descend; we are, and also we are not. For into the same
stream we cannot possibly descend twice, since it is always scattering
and collecting itself again, or rather it at the same time flows to us
and from us.” There is, therefore, ground for the assertion that
Heraclitus had banished all rest and continuance from the totality of
things; and it is doubtless in this very respect that he accuses the eye
and the ear of deception, because they reveal to men a continuance where
there is only an uninterrupted change.
Heraclitus has analyzed the principle of the becoming still more
closely, in the propositions which he utters, to account for the origin
of things, where he shows that all becoming must be conceived as the
product of warring opposites, as the harmonious union of opposite
determinations. Hence his two well-known propositions: “Strife is the
father of things,” and “The One setting itself at variance with itself,
harmonizes with itself, like the harmony of the bow and the viol.”
“Unite,” so runs another of his sayings, “the whole and the not-whole,
the coalescing and the not-coalescing, the harmonious and the
discordant, and thus we have the one becoming from the all, and the all
from the one.”
4. THE PRINCIPLE OF FIRE.—In what relation does the principle of fire,
which is also ascribed to Heraclitus, stand to the principle of the
becoming? Aristotle says that he took fire as his principle, in the same
way that Thales took water, and Anaximenes took air. But it is clear we
must not interpret this to mean that Heraclitus regarded fire as the
original material or fundamental element of things, after the manner of
the Ionics. If he ascribed reality only to the becoming, it is
impossible that he should have set by the side of this becoming, yet
another elemental matter as a fundamental substance. When, therefore,
Heraclitus calls the world an ever-living fire, which in certain stages
and certain degrees extinguishes and again enkindles itself, when he
says that every thing can be exchanged for fire, and fire for every
thing, just as we barter things for gold and gold for things, he can
only mean thereby that fire represents the abiding power of this eternal
transformation and transposition, in other words, the conception of
life, in the most obvious and effective way. We might name fire, in the
Heraclitic sense, the symbol or the manifestation of the becoming, but
that it is also with him the substratum of movement, _i. e._ the means
with which the power of movement, which is antecedent to all matter,
serves it self in order to bring out the living process of things. In
the same way Heraclitus goes on to explain the manifoldness of things,
by affirming that they arise from certain hindrances and a partial
extinction of this fire. The product of its extremest hindrance is the
earth, and the other things lie intermediately between.
5. TRANSITION TO THE ATOMISTS.—We have above regarded the Heraclitic
principle as the consequent of the Eleatic, but we might as properly
consider the two as antitheses. While Heraclitus destroys all abiding
being in an absolutely flowing becoming, so, on the other hand,
Parmenides destroys all becoming in an absolutely abiding being; and
while the former charges the eye and the ear with deception, in that
they transform the flowing becoming into a quiescent being, the latter
also accuses these same senses of an untrue representation, in that they
draw the abiding being into the movement of the becoming. We can
therefore say that the being and the becoming are equally valid
antitheses, which demand again a synthesis and reconciliation. But now
can we say that Heraclitus actually and satisfactorily solved the
problem of Zeno? Zeno had shown every thing actual to be a
contradiction, and from this had inferred their not-being, and it is
only in this inference that Heraclitus deviates from the Eleatics. He
also regarded the phenomenal world as an existing contradiction, but he
clung to this contradiction as to an ultimate fact. That which had been
the negative result of the Eleatics, he uttered as his positive
principle. The dialectics which Zeno had subjectively used against the
phenomenal, he directed objectively as a proof for the becoming. But
this becoming which the Eleatics had thought themselves obliged to deny
entirely, Heraclitus did not explain by simply asserting that it was the
only true principle. The question continually returned—why is all being
a becoming? Why does the one go out over into the many? To give an
answer to this question, _i. e._ to explain the becoming from the
presupposed principle of being, forms the standpoint and problem of the
_Empedoclean_ and _Atomistic_ philosophy.