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1ters to use the Greek philosophers as props to support their own systems — a temptation to inter- pret them arbitrarily, to look down upon them patron- izingly, as it were, showing that what they meant was this or that modern thought, having only not learned to express themselves as well as we have. Among his- torians of philosophy this appears as a one-sidedness, so that it is commonly necessary in reading a history of philosophy to maj^ a correction for the author's " personal equation." /The histories of Schwegler and of Lewes are examples — the one biased by Hegel- ianism, the other by Positivism. Undoubtedly, a cer- tain personal equation is unavoidable, and it is as impossible for an interpreter of Greek philosophy to make himself wholly Greek as it is unfair to represent the ancient thinker as wholly German or English. But when this becomes complete one-sidedness, or blindness to all but one series of an author's thoughts, or a willful or even unintentional perversion of his words, vigorous remonstrance is called for. This attempt to fully understand the ancients, to make them speak in the phraseology of some modern school, must be distinguished from the recent move- ment, represented by Prof. Lagarde and others, in interpreting historic thought and historic events psychologically. This movement is certainly legiti- mate, based as it is on the truth of the similarity of constitution of all human minds, and the probability that underlying all representative historic creeds are great related if not identical' thoughts. Even here, of 4 HBRACLITUS. course, the attempt to express these thoughts in the set phrases of any one people is inadequate. We proceed, then, tcQook at some of the work done upon the philosophy of Heraclitus. Here we shall not attempt any examination of Zeller's exposition, since his work, though it is perhaps the very best that has been done in this field, is critical rather than recon- structive, and like his whole history of Greek philos- ophy, is a marvel of candor as well as of immense research. Even Zeller, however, has not wholly escaped the charge of one-sidedness, since Benn, in the preface to his work on the Greek philosophers, has accused him of never having outgrown the semi-Hege- lian prejudice of his youth/) Lassalle. (Lassalle, in two ponderous volumes )noted above (page 1), Vjiade the first and most elaborate attempt to reconstruct the system of the Ephesian philosopher.) His work exhibits immense labor and study, and (extended research in the discovery of new fragments and of ancient testimony^together with some acuteness in their use. ^assalle has a very distinct view of the philosophy of Heraclitus. But it is not an original view.
2tem of the Ephesian philosopher.) His work exhibits immense labor and study, and (extended research in the discovery of new fragments and of ancient testimony^together with some acuteness in their use. ^assalle has a very distinct view of the philosophy of Heraclitus. But it is not an original view. It is, in fact, nothing but an expansion of the short account of Heraclitus in Hegel's History of Phil- osophy, although Lassalle makes no mention of him,y except to quote upon his title-page Hegel's well-known motto, ^* Es ist kein Satz des Heraklit, den ich nicht in meine Logik aufgenommen." ^egel's conception of Heraclitus is, in a word, as follows : Heraclitus' ♦ Absolute was the unity of being and non-being. His whole system was an expansion of the speculative thought of the principle of pure becoming. He appre- hended, and was the first to apprehend, the Absolute HISTORICAL AND CRITICAL. 5 as a process, as the unity of opposites, as dialectic itself. His great contribution was the speculative transition from the being of the Eleatics to the idea of becoming?) Now how does Hegel support this position ? There is in his Logic but one passage referring to Hera- plitus. There he says, *^ Glancing at the principle of the Eleatics, Heraclitus then goes on to say, ^ Being no more is than non -being ' (oudeu fiaXXov to 8v too fxi] oi^roc iau), a statement expressing the negative nature of abstract being and its identity with non-being'' (Wallace, The Logic of Hegel, p. 144 ; cp. Science of Logic, Hegel's Werke, Vol. 3, p. 80). Hegel omits, in the Logic, to give the reference to the above quotation, but in his History of Philosophy (Werke, Vol. 13, p. 332) he quotes the same passage with the reference. It is to Aristotle, Metaph. i. 4. We turn to the same and find that it is a passage which Aristotle quotes from the Atomists, Democritus and Leucippus, and that it has not the slightest referenc e to Heraclitus, who, indeed, is not mentioned in tlie same chapter. This is rather discouraging, but the account in the History of Philosophy, to which we now turn, is scarcely less so. There Hegel begins his exposition of Heraclitus as follows : **1. Das allgemeine Princip. Dieser kiihne Qeist (Heraclitus) hat zuerst das tiefe Wort gesagt, * Das Seyn ist nicht mehr als das Nichtseyn,' es ist ebenso wenig, Oder, * Seyn und Nichts sey dasselbe,' das Wesen sey die Veranderung " (Gesch. d. Phil. Vol. 13, p. 332). Now it happens that Heraclitus said nothing of the kind. As references Hegel gives Aristotle, Meta- phys. i. 4; iv. 7; iv. 3. The first passage, as we have already seen, is from the Atomists. The second turns out upon examination to be simply the expression, ^ 6 HBRACLITUS. ** All things are and are not" {nduza elvat xai fjtrj ehat)y and the third is a statement of Aristotle that some people supposed Heraclitus to have said that the same thing could both be and not be the same.
3The second turns out upon examination to be simply the expression, ^ 6 HBRACLITUS. ** All things are and are not" {nduza elvat xai fjtrj ehat)y and the third is a statement of Aristotle that some people supposed Heraclitus to have said that the same thing could both be and not be the same. Moreover, neither of these passages is Heraclitic in form, and they are not even mentioned in Bywater's edition. The only expression of Heraclitus that resembles in form the above passage from Aristotle is that of frag. ^ 81, " Into the same river we step and we do not step. ^ ^ We Are and we. a re not." The over-interpretation by OO is which this simple passage, expressing incessant phys- . V '- ical change^ is transformed into the logical principle --1 ^^ . ■ / of Hegel, "Das Seyn ist nicht mehr als das Nicht- ^ "^ seyn," "Sgyi V und Nirhtn nny flnnnMb fi," is audacious --at least. Furthermore, we may say here in passing, that neither the expressions zb 8v, (jltj ov, nor even rb ^vi^'l xq-vofjiei^ov, occur in any genuine saying of Heraclitus; - V.V. .4 although if they did occur, it would be easy to show cVv-t-. /that they could not mean at all what Hegel meant by (VlVu.f'1/f ^^^^Sy non-being, and becoming. Even the Eleatic '^j Being was not at all the same with that of Hegel, but ^ was finite, spherical, and something very much like that which we should call material. But Heraclitus, who indeed preceded Parmenides, said nothing of being nor of non-being, nor did he speak of becoming in the abstract, although the trustful reader of Hegel, Lassalle, or Ferrier, might well suppose he spoke of nothing else. That which these writers mistook for becoming was, as we shall see later, only physical change. With the loss of this comer-stone, the Hera- clitic support of the Hegelian Logic fails, and Hegel's boast that there was no sentence, of Heraclitus that his Logic had not taken up becomes rather ludicrous, especially if one will read through the remains of jVo-i <' HISTORICAL AND CRITICAL. 7 Heraclitus' work on Nature and search for his rich and varied thoughts in the Logic of Hegel. Returning now to Lassalle, the above principles are carried out more in detail as follows : The chief point in the philosophy of Heraclitus is that here first the formal notion of the speculative idea in general was grasped. With him first emerged the conception of pure thought defecated of the sensuous. His ground principle was the dialectical opposition of being and - non-being. The kernel and whole depth of his phil- osophy may be expressed in the one sentence, ** Only non-being is" (Lassalle, Vol. 1, p. 35). The unity of being and non-being is a unity of process (processi- rende Einheit). It is the unity of opposites, the idea of ^ becoming, the divine law, the yviofirj of the determining God (Id. Vol. 1, p. 24). Fire, strife, peace, time, neces- sity, harmony, the way up and down, the flux, justice, fate. Logos, are all different terms for this one idea (Id.
The source text as printed, transcribed diplomatically. Where the source language uses a non-Latin script that reaches us only through a Victorian romanisation, this layer is labelled transliteration, because that is what we hold.
1ters to use the Greek philosophers as props to support their own systems — a temptation to inter- pret them arbitrarily, to look down upon them patron- izingly, as it were, showing that what they meant was this or that modern thought, having only not learned to express themselves as well as we have. Among his- torians of philosophy this appears as a one-sidedness, so that it is commonly necessary in reading a history of philosophy to maj^ a correction for the author's " personal equation." /The histories of Schwegler and of Lewes are examples — the one biased by Hegel- ianism, the other by Positivism. Undoubtedly, a cer- tain personal equation is unavoidable, and it is as impossible for an interpreter of Greek philosophy to make himself wholly Greek as it is unfair to represent the ancient thinker as wholly German or English. But when this becomes complete one-sidedness, or blindness to all but one series of an author's thoughts, or a willful or even unintentional perversion of his words, vigorous remonstrance is called for. This attempt to fully understand the ancients, to make them speak in the phraseology of some modern school, must be distinguished from the recent move- ment, represented by Prof. Lagarde and others, in interpreting historic thought and historic events psychologically. This movement is certainly legiti- mate, based as it is on the truth of the similarity of constitution of all human minds, and the probability that underlying all representative historic creeds are great related if not identical' thoughts. Even here, of 4 HBRACLITUS. course, the attempt to express these thoughts in the set phrases of any one people is inadequate. We proceed, then, tcQook at some of the work done upon the philosophy of Heraclitus. Here we shall not attempt any examination of Zeller's exposition, since his work, though it is perhaps the very best that has been done in this field, is critical rather than recon- structive, and like his whole history of Greek philos- ophy, is a marvel of candor as well as of immense research. Even Zeller, however, has not wholly escaped the charge of one-sidedness, since Benn, in the preface to his work on the Greek philosophers, has accused him of never having outgrown the semi-Hege- lian prejudice of his youth/) Lassalle. (Lassalle, in two ponderous volumes )noted above (page 1), Vjiade the first and most elaborate attempt to reconstruct the system of the Ephesian philosopher.) His work exhibits immense labor and study, and (extended research in the discovery of new fragments and of ancient testimony^together with some acuteness in their use. ^assalle has a very distinct view of the philosophy of Heraclitus. But it is not an original view.
2tem of the Ephesian philosopher.) His work exhibits immense labor and study, and (extended research in the discovery of new fragments and of ancient testimony^together with some acuteness in their use. ^assalle has a very distinct view of the philosophy of Heraclitus. But it is not an original view. It is, in fact, nothing but an expansion of the short account of Heraclitus in Hegel's History of Phil- osophy, although Lassalle makes no mention of him,y except to quote upon his title-page Hegel's well-known motto, ^* Es ist kein Satz des Heraklit, den ich nicht in meine Logik aufgenommen." ^egel's conception of Heraclitus is, in a word, as follows : Heraclitus' ♦ Absolute was the unity of being and non-being. His whole system was an expansion of the speculative thought of the principle of pure becoming. He appre- hended, and was the first to apprehend, the Absolute HISTORICAL AND CRITICAL. 5 as a process, as the unity of opposites, as dialectic itself. His great contribution was the speculative transition from the being of the Eleatics to the idea of becoming?) Now how does Hegel support this position ? There is in his Logic but one passage referring to Hera- plitus. There he says, *^ Glancing at the principle of the Eleatics, Heraclitus then goes on to say, ^ Being no more is than non -being ' (oudeu fiaXXov to 8v too fxi] oi^roc iau), a statement expressing the negative nature of abstract being and its identity with non-being'' (Wallace, The Logic of Hegel, p. 144 ; cp. Science of Logic, Hegel's Werke, Vol. 3, p. 80). Hegel omits, in the Logic, to give the reference to the above quotation, but in his History of Philosophy (Werke, Vol. 13, p. 332) he quotes the same passage with the reference. It is to Aristotle, Metaph. i. 4. We turn to the same and find that it is a passage which Aristotle quotes from the Atomists, Democritus and Leucippus, and that it has not the slightest referenc e to Heraclitus, who, indeed, is not mentioned in tlie same chapter. This is rather discouraging, but the account in the History of Philosophy, to which we now turn, is scarcely less so. There Hegel begins his exposition of Heraclitus as follows : **1. Das allgemeine Princip. Dieser kiihne Qeist (Heraclitus) hat zuerst das tiefe Wort gesagt, * Das Seyn ist nicht mehr als das Nichtseyn,' es ist ebenso wenig, Oder, * Seyn und Nichts sey dasselbe,' das Wesen sey die Veranderung " (Gesch. d. Phil. Vol. 13, p. 332). Now it happens that Heraclitus said nothing of the kind. As references Hegel gives Aristotle, Meta- phys. i. 4; iv. 7; iv. 3. The first passage, as we have already seen, is from the Atomists. The second turns out upon examination to be simply the expression, ^ 6 HBRACLITUS. ** All things are and are not" {nduza elvat xai fjtrj ehat)y and the third is a statement of Aristotle that some people supposed Heraclitus to have said that the same thing could both be and not be the same.
3The second turns out upon examination to be simply the expression, ^ 6 HBRACLITUS. ** All things are and are not" {nduza elvat xai fjtrj ehat)y and the third is a statement of Aristotle that some people supposed Heraclitus to have said that the same thing could both be and not be the same. Moreover, neither of these passages is Heraclitic in form, and they are not even mentioned in Bywater's edition. The only expression of Heraclitus that resembles in form the above passage from Aristotle is that of frag. ^ 81, " Into the same river we step and we do not step. ^ ^ We Are and we. a re not." The over-interpretation by OO is which this simple passage, expressing incessant phys- . V '- ical change^ is transformed into the logical principle --1 ^^ . ■ / of Hegel, "Das Seyn ist nicht mehr als das Nicht- ^ "^ seyn," "Sgyi V und Nirhtn nny flnnnMb fi," is audacious --at least. Furthermore, we may say here in passing, that neither the expressions zb 8v, (jltj ov, nor even rb ^vi^'l xq-vofjiei^ov, occur in any genuine saying of Heraclitus; - V.V. .4 although if they did occur, it would be easy to show cVv-t-. /that they could not mean at all what Hegel meant by (VlVu.f'1/f ^^^^Sy non-being, and becoming. Even the Eleatic '^j Being was not at all the same with that of Hegel, but ^ was finite, spherical, and something very much like that which we should call material. But Heraclitus, who indeed preceded Parmenides, said nothing of being nor of non-being, nor did he speak of becoming in the abstract, although the trustful reader of Hegel, Lassalle, or Ferrier, might well suppose he spoke of nothing else. That which these writers mistook for becoming was, as we shall see later, only physical change. With the loss of this comer-stone, the Hera- clitic support of the Hegelian Logic fails, and Hegel's boast that there was no sentence, of Heraclitus that his Logic had not taken up becomes rather ludicrous, especially if one will read through the remains of jVo-i <' HISTORICAL AND CRITICAL. 7 Heraclitus' work on Nature and search for his rich and varied thoughts in the Logic of Hegel. Returning now to Lassalle, the above principles are carried out more in detail as follows : The chief point in the philosophy of Heraclitus is that here first the formal notion of the speculative idea in general was grasped. With him first emerged the conception of pure thought defecated of the sensuous. His ground principle was the dialectical opposition of being and - non-being. The kernel and whole depth of his phil- osophy may be expressed in the one sentence, ** Only non-being is" (Lassalle, Vol. 1, p. 35). The unity of being and non-being is a unity of process (processi- rende Einheit). It is the unity of opposites, the idea of ^ becoming, the divine law, the yviofirj of the determining God (Id. Vol. 1, p. 24). Fire, strife, peace, time, neces- sity, harmony, the way up and down, the flux, justice, fate. Logos, are all different terms for this one idea (Id.
The source text as printed, transcribed diplomatically. Where the source language uses a non-Latin script that reaches us only through a Victorian romanisation, this layer is labelled transliteration, because that is what we hold.
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