where this principle is made the basis of interpretation, and the second part, where it sinks into comparative insignificance when he discovers that Heraclitus is primarily a theologian and gets his ideas from Egyptian religion. To say that we shall better appreciate a philosopher's position if we understand his astronomy and his theories of the earth and nature, is of course true to every one. Moreover, that Heraclitus con- sidered the earth as flat, the sun as moving in a semi- circle and as no larger than it looks, the upper air as drier than the lower, and the lower world as dark and wet, there is no reason to deny. In fact, this cosmology, as Teichmiiller details it, is so simple and blends so well with the Heraclitic sayings in general, that the picture of it once formed can hardly be banished from the mind. But that it adds much to the explication of the philoso'phy as a whole is doubtful. It is true that physics came before metaphysics, if by that is meant that men speculated about Nature before they speculated about being. But this distinction has little bearing on the interpretation of Heraclitus. A prin- ciple more to the point, and one that Teichmiiller has not always observed, is that religion, poetry and metaphor came before either physics or metaphysics. From the very fact, also, that physics came l>efore metaphysics, when the latter did come, men were compelled to express its truths in such physical terms as they were in possession of. He therefore who will see in the sentences of Heraclitus nothing beyond their physical and literal meaning, will miss the best part of his philosophy. For instance, Teichmiiller interprets the saying that day and night are the same, as meaning that they are made up of the same physical constitu- ents (see above, p. 24). If possible, this is worse than
Historical and Critical. 33
Schuster's explanation that they are the same because
they are each similar divisions of time(!), an explana-
tion which Teichmiiller very well ridicules (Id. I, p. 49).
No such childish interpretations of this passage are
necessary when it is seen that this is simply another
antithesis to express Heraclitus' great thought of the
unity of opposites, on the ground that by the universal
law of change, opposites are forever passing into each
other, as indeed is said in so many words in a passage
from Plutarch which these critics seem to have
slighted (Consol. ad Apoll. 10, p. 106; see frag. 78).
Equally unnecessary and arbitrary is Teichmiiller's
singular attempt to prove on physical grounds the
identity of the two gods, Dionysus and Hades (see
above, p. 24).
In pursuance of his method, Teichmiiller supposes that the Heraclitic fire was real fire sucH as our senses perceive, fire that bums and crackles and feels warm. No other critic agrees with him in this. Zeller espec- ially opposes this conception (Vol. I, p. 588). It is not to be supposed that Teichmiiller understands Hera- clitus to mean that the present world and all its phenomena are real fire. Fire he conceives to be, rather, the first principle or d.pyrj^ the real essence of the universe, chosen as water was by Thales or air by Anaximenes, only with more deliberation, since fire has the peculiarity of taking to itself nourishment. In a word, since anybody can see that our present earth, water, and air, are not fire that burns and crackles, all that Teichmiiller can mean is that this kind of fire was the original thing out of which the present world was made. But there is not the least support for this meaning in any saying of Heraclitus. In all the sen- tences, fire is conceived as something of the present,
34 HERACLITUS.
something directly involved in the ceaseless change of the world. "Fire, {i, e,, z£/?ayv6c, the thunderbolt),'* he says, "rules all" (Hippolytus, Ref. haer. ix. 10; = frag. 28). "This world, the same for all, neither any of the gods nor any man has made, but it always was, and is, and shall be, an ever living fire *' (Clement of Alex. Strom, v. 14, p. 711; =frag. 20). "Fire is exchanged for all things and all things for fire'* (Plutarch, de EI. 8, p. 388 ; = frag. 22). These passages are sufficient to show that Teichmiiller's conception of the fire is untenable. We may, however, mention the fact noted by Zeller (Vol. I, p. 588), that both Aristotle (de An. i. 2, 405, a, 25) and Simplicius (Phys. 8, a) explain that Heraclitus chose to call the world fire " in order to express the absolute life of Nature, and to make the restless change of phenomena comprehen- sible."
Another point that demands criticism is the idea of
actuality and potentiality which Teichmiiller finds
hidden in Heraclitus' philosophy and metaphorically
expressed by sunset, death, sleep, etc. Since there is
a qualitative interchange of the elements, they must
be in some sense the same. Water is fire and fire is
water. But since water is not actually fire, it must be
so potentially. Therefore, water is potential fire.
Such is Teichmiiller's reasoning, as we have seen. Of
course, it can be reversed with equal right. Since fire
is not actually water, it must be so potentially. There-
fore, fire is potential water. Which is to say that we
have h^re a simple reversible series in which there is
not only an eternal progress (or regress) from fire to
water, but equally, and under the same conditions, an
eternal regress (or progress) from water to fire.
Either, therefore, may, with as good right as the other,
Historical and Critical. 35
represent actuality or potentiality. In other words, actuality and potentiality are superfluous ideas in this system. In fact, this antithesis has no place in meta- physics outside the philosophy of Aristotle, and he who has failed to see that right in this connection lies the main difference between the philosophy of Aris- totle and that of Heraclitus, has missed the most vital part of the latter. With Aristotle there is an eternal progress but no regress. The potential is ever passing into the actual, but not the reverse. To be sure, a thing may be both actual arid potential, but not as regards the same thing. The hewn marble is potential as regards the statue and actual as regards the rough marble, but of course the hewn marble and the statue cannot be reciprocally potential or actual. Matter is eternally becoming form, but not the reverse. Thus follows Aristotle's necessary assumption of a prime mover, an inexhaustible source of motion, itself un- moved — pure actuality, without potentiality. Hence the mainspring of the peripatetic philosophy is the unmoved moving first cause. But the philosophy of the Ephesian is the reverse of all this. With him there is no fixed being whatever (see Teichmiiller him- self, I, p. 121 : " Es bleibt dabei nichts Festes zuriick," etc.), no unmoved first cause outside the shifting world which is its own God and prime mover. Thus Teichmiiller, in identifying the Heraclitic fire with the Aristotelian pure actuality, overlooked the slight differ- ence that while the one is absolute motion, the other is absolute rest ! We are glad, however, not to find this Aristotelian notion, which, though prevalent in meta- physics, has never added a ray of light to the subject, present in the philosophy of the Ephesian, and we see here another case of over-interpretation by which
36 HBRACLITUS.
Heraclitus' innocent use of such terms as sunset, death,
and self-conceahnent, caused Aristotelian metaphysics
to b0 forced upon him.
Historical and Critical. 37
lishing for Heraclitus. Io<p6v in this passage does not stand for the world-ruling Wisdom or Reason, or Divine Law, of which Heraclitus has so much to say in other passages. To assert the " apartness " of that Law would be to disintegrate the entire system, the chief point of which is the immanence of the Divine Law as the element of order in the shifting world. It does not follow that because zb aoipbv is used in the above larger sense in the passage from Clement of Alexandria (Strom, v. 14, p. 718 ; =:frag. 65), that ao(fb\) cannot be used in quite the ordinary sense in the present passage. That it is so is attested by the agreement of Schuster (p. 42), Heinze (Lehre vom Logos, p. 32), Zeller (Vol. I, p. 572, 1), and Pfleiderer (p. 60). Lassalle, indeed, agrees with Teichmiiller. Schuster, following Heinze, understands the sentence to mean merely that wisdom is separated from all (men), that is, true wisdom is possessed by no one. Zeller, followed by Pfleiderer, renders it : " No one attains to this — to understand that wisdom is separated from all things, that is, has to go its own way inde- pendent of general opinion." Schuster's interpretation is the most natural, so that the fragment belongs among the many denunciations of the ignorance of the common people — as indeed By water places it — and has nothing to do with any theory of the *^ separateness " of an absolute or immaterial principle. Neither is there any other passage which supports this doctrine. Li further support, however, of the Catharsis theory in general, Teichmiiller alleges the passage from Plutarch (Vit. Rom. 28), which speaks of the future purification of the soul from all bodily and earthy elements, and which Teichmiiller thinks to have a strong Heraclitic coloring. In this passage Heraclitus is quoted as
38 HERACLITUS.
saying that "the dry soul is the best/' but beyond this fragment it is a mere conjecture that it was taken from him. The passage at any rate is unimportant. What then remains to establish any connection what- ever of Heraclitus with the "history of the idea of the ecXapei^i(: " ? Only the most general antithesis of fire and moisture, with the added notion that the former is the better and the latter worse. Since the divine essence of the universe itself is fire, the way upward from earth and water to fire is the diviner process, and pure fire is the noblest and highest existence. But this is shown better in the ethical sphere. The soul itself is the fiery principle (Arist. de An. i. 2, p. 405, a, 25). " The dry soul is the wisest and best" (frag. 74). The soul of the drunken, stupid man is moist (cp. frag. 73). The highest good was to He'raclitus the clearest perception, and the clearest and most perfect percep- tion was the perception of the Universal Law of Nature, the expression of which was pure fire ; and such perception was coincident with that condition of the soul when it was most like the essence of the uni- verse. This is the sum-total of the idea of the Catharsis found in Heraclitus. It is worthy of notice, to be sure, but it is not so different from what might be found in any philosophy, especially an ethical philosophy, as to make it of any great moment, either in the history of ideas or in the exposition of this system.
We have studied now those parts of Teichmiiller's
work which, either by reason of their incompleteness
or manifest error, most needed examination, namely
his method, his wrong conception of the Heraclitic
fire, his useless and unfounded theory of the actual
and potential and of the separateness of the imma-
terial, and his over-emphasized doctrine of the Cathar-
Historical and Critical. 39
sis. Concerning the other points, it is only necessary in addition to call attention to the extreme value of his contribution in his explanations of the relation of Heraclitus to Xenophanes, to Ahaxagoras and to Plato, of the Heraclitic Logos, of the flux, of the unity of opposites, and of the invisible harmony and the intelli- gible world defended against the sensationalism of Schuster. In the second part of his work also, though its value is less, he has contributed not a little light by his emphasis of the theological character of this philosophy, though one doubts whether his laborious collection of resemblances between the philosophy of the Ephesian and the religion of Egypt has shed much light on Heraclitus' position. It is seen at once that by taking such general conceptions as war and harmony, purification, periodicity of the world, etc., it would be easy to make a long list of parallelisms between any religion and any system of philosophy not separated farther in time and place than Heraclitus of Ephesus and the Egyptians. The resemblances, however, are certainly not all accidental, but they are such as do not aflfect the originality of the Ephesian, and imfor- ^ tunately do not add much to a better knowledge of C
his philosophy. •
Pfleiderer.
Dr. Edmund Pfleiderer comes forward in a recent
volume of 380 pages (see above, p. 1), with an attempt
to interpret the philosophy of Heraclitus from a new
and independent standpoint. He expresses dissatisfac-
tion with all previous results. Other critics have made
the mistake of starting not from the positive but from
the negative side, namely, from the universal flux (as
Zoller), or from the law of opposites (as Lassalle).
But the hatred of the opinions of the masses which