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The Fragments
Op the Work of
Heeaclitus of Ephesus
On Nature
TRANSLATED FROM THE GREEK TEXT OF BYWATER, WITH AM INTBODUOTIOM HISTOBIOAL AMD CRITICAL
Bx
a. T. W. PATRICK, Ph.D.
Fb0fbs80b of Philosophy in the State Uniyebsity of Iowa
Baltimore
N. Murray
[Reprinted frora the Amebioan Journal of Psyoholoot, 1888.]
A Thesis Accbpted for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the
Johns Hopkins University, 1888.
» «f ta
PBESS OF ISAAO FBIEDENWALD, BALTIMORE.
01 ^iovrsc-
All thoughts, all creeds, all dreams are true,
All visions wild and strange ; Man is the measure of all truth
Unto himself. All truth is change, All men do walk in sleep, and all
Have faith in that they dream : For all things are as they seem to all,
And all things flow like a stream.
There is no rest, no calm, no pause.
Nor good nor ill, nor light nor shade. Nor essence nor eternal laws:
For nothing is, but all is made. But if I dream that all these are.
They are to me for that I dream ; For all things are as they seem to all.
And all things flow like a stream.
Argal — this very opinion is only true relatively to the flowing philosophers.
Tbnnyson.
PREFACE.
The latest writers on Heraclitus, namely, Gustav Teichmuller and Edmund Pfleiderer, have thought it necessary to preface their works with an apology for adding other monographs to the Heraclitic literature, already enriched by treatises from such distinguished men as Schleiermacher, Lassalle, Zeller, and Schuster. That still other study of Heraclitus, however, needs no apology, will be admitted when it is seen that these (scholarly critics, instead of determining the place of Heraclitus in the history of philosophy, have so far disagreed, that while Schuster makes him out to be a sensationalist and empiricist, Lassalle finds that he is a rationalist and idealist. While to Teichmuller, his starting point and the key to his whole system is found in his physics, to Zeller it is found in his metaphysics, and to Pfleiderer in his religionlN* Heraclitus' theology was derived, according to Teichmuller, from Egypt ; according to Lassalle, from Lidia ; according to Pfleid- erer, from the Greek Mysteries. The Heraclitic flux, according to Pfleiderer, was consequent on his abstract theories ; according to Teichmiiller, his abstract theo- ries resulted from his observation of the flux. ( Pfleid- erer says that Heraclitus was an optimist ; Gottlob
VI PREFACE.
Mayer says that he was a pessunist. According to
Schuster he was a hylozoist, according to Zeller a pan-
theist, according to Pfleiderer a panzoist, according
to Lassalle a panlogist.) Naturally, therefore, in the
hands of these critics, with their various theories to
support, rche remains of Heraclitus' work have suffered
a violence of interpretation only partially excused by
his known obscurity, j No small proportion of the
fragments, as will be seen in my introduction, have
been taken in a diametrically opposite sense.
/Recently a contribution towards the disentanglement
of this maze has been made by Mr. By water, an acute
English scholar. His work (Heracliti Ephesii Reli-
quiae, Oxford, 1877) is simply a complete edition of the
now existing fragments of Heraclitus' work, together
with the sources from which they are drawn, with so
much of the context as to make them intelligible, j
Under these circumstances I have thought that a
translation of the fragments into English, that every
man may read and judge for himself, would be the
best contribution that could be made. The increasing
interest in early Greek philosophy, and particularly in
^eraclitus, who is the one Greek thinker most in
accord with the thought of our century^ makes such a
translation justifiable, and the excellent and timely
edition of the Greek text by Mr. Bywater makes it
practicable.
The translations both of the fragments and of the context are made from the original sources, though I
Preface. Vii
have followed the text of Bywater except in a very-
few cases, designated in the critical notes. As(^a
number of the fragments are ambiguous, and several
of them contain a play upon words/^ have appended
the entire Greek text. ^
The collection of sources is wholly that of Mr.
Bywater. In these I have made a translation, not of
all the references, but only of those from which the
fragment is immediately taken, adding others only in
cases of especial interest.
My acknowledgments are due to Dr. Basil L. Gil-
dersleeve, of the Johns Hopkins University, for kind
suggestions concerning the translation, and to Dr.
Q. Stanley Hall for valuable assistance in relation to
the plan of the work.
Baltimore, September 1, 1888.
CONTENTS.
INTRODUCTION. Section I. — Historical and Critical.
Page
Literature 1
Over-systemization in Philosophy 2
Over-interpretation in Historical Criticism 3
Exposition of Lassalle \ ■ 4
HegePs Conception of Heraclitus 5
Criticism of Hegel's Conception 6
Criticism of Lassalle 9
Exposition of Schuster 11
Criticism of Schuster 17
Exposition of Teichmiiller 23
Criticism of Teichmuller 31
Exposition of Pfleiderer 39
Criticism of Pfleiderer 46
Section II. — Reconstructive.
Can the Positions of the Critics be harmonized? 66
Heraclitus' Starting-point 57
Heraclitus as a Preacher and Prophet 57
The Content of his Message 58
The Universal Order 60
Strife 62
The Unity of Opposites 63
The Flux 65
Cosmogony 68
Ethics 69
Optimism 71
CONTENTS.
Cause of the Present Interest in Heraclitus 72
Passion for Origins 72
Greek Objectivity 73
Heraclitic Ideas 74
Relation to Socrates and Plato 75
Socrates 76
Birth of Self -consciousness 77
Loss of Love of Beauty 78
Rise of Transcendentalism 79
Platonic Dualism 80
Return to Heraclitus 82
Defeat of Heraclitus 83
Translation of thb Fbagmbnts 84-114
Critical Notes 115-123
Greek Text 124-131
INTRODUCTION.
Section I. — Historical and Critical.
/There may be mentioned also the following addi-
tional writings which have been consulted in the
preparation of these pages :-^ottlob Mayer) Heraklit
von Ephesus und Arthur Schopenhauer ^^ Heidelberg,
1886 ])(Campbell : Theaetetus of Plato, Appendix A,
Oxford, 1883 ; A. W. Benn : The Greek Philosophers,
London, I882)
2 HERACLITUS.
vAfter the introductory collection and arrangement
of the Heraclitic fragments by Schleiermacher, and
the scholarly discriminative work and additions of
Bernays, four attempts have been made successively
by Lassalle, Schuster, Teichmtiller, and Pfleiderer, to
reconstruct or interpret the philosophical system of
Heraclitus. The positions taken and the results
arrived at by these eminent scholars and critics are
largely, if not wholly, different and discordant. A
brief statement of their several positions will be our
best introduction to the study of Heraclitus at first
hand, and at the same time will offer us incidentally
some striking examples of prevalent methods of his-
toric criticism. )
^ One of the greatest evils in circles of philosophical and religious thought has always been the evil of over- systemization. It is classification, or the scientific method, carried too far. It is the tendency to arrange under any outlined system or theory, more facts than it will properly include. It is the temptation, in a word, to classify according to resemblances which are too faint or fanciful. In the field of historic criticism this evil takes the form of over-interpretationA Just as in daily life we interpret every sense perception according to our own mental forms, s(\we tend to read our own thoughts into every saying of the ancients, and then proceed to use these, often without dis- honesty, to support our favorite modern systems. j The use of sacred writings will naturally occur to every one as the most striking illustration of this over-interpre- tation. Especially in the exegesis of the Bible has this prostitution of ancient writings to every man's religious views been long since recognized and condemned, and if most recently this tendency has been largely cor-
Historical and Critical. 3
rected in religious circles, it is all the more deplorable, in philosophical criticism, to find it still flourishing. ^Unfortunately, this vice continues, and it appears nowhere more plainly than in the interpretation of Greek philosophy. There is a great temptation to modem writers 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/)