_ meant originally “structure,” and the illustration of the
bow and the lyre shows that this idea was present. On the other hand, that taken from the concord of high and low notes shows that the musical sense of the word, namely, an octave, was not wholly absent. . As to the “ bow and the lyre” (fr. 45), I think that Professor Campbell has best brought out the point of the simile. “As the arrow leaves the string,” he says, “the hands are pulling opposite ways to each other, and to the different parts of the bow (cf. Plato, Rep. 4. 439); and the sweet note of the lyre is due to a similar tension and retention. The secret of the universe is the same.” * War, then, is the father and king of all things, in the
1 Campbell’s Zheaezetus (2nd ed.), p. 244. See above, p. 150, ἢ. 2. Bernays explained the phrase as referring to the skage of the bow and lyre, but this is much less likely. Wilamowitz’s interpretation is substantially the same as Campbell’s. ‘‘ Es ist mit der Welt wie mit dem Bogen, den man auseinanderzieht, damit er zusammenschnellt, wie mit der Saite, die man ihrer Spannung entgegenziehen muss, damit sie klingt ” (Leseduch, ii.
Herakleitos of Ephesos 185
world as in human society (fr. 44) ; and Homer’s wish
that strife might cease was really a prayer for the
destruction of the world (fr. 43).
We know from Philo that Herakleitos supported
his theory of the attainment of harmony through strife
by a multitude of examples; and, as it happens, some
of these can be recovered. There is a remarkable
agreement between a passage of this kind in the pseudo-
Aristotelian treatise, entitled Zhe Kosmos, and the
Hippokratean work to which we have already referred.
That the authors of both drew from the same source,
namely, Herakleitos, is probable in itself, and is made
practically certain by the fact that this agreement
extends in part to the Letters of Heraklettos, which,
though spurious, were certainly composed by some one
who had access to the original work. The argument
was that men themselves act just in the same way as
Nature, and it is therefore surprising that they do not
recognise the laws by which she works. The painter
produces his harmonious effects by the contrast of
colours, the musician by that of high and low notes.
“Tf one were to make all things alike, there would
be no delight in them.” There are many similar
examples in the Hippokratean tract, some of which
must certainly come from Herakleitos ; but it is not
easy to separate them from the later additions,’
1 See on all this Patin’s Quellenstudien 2u Heraklit (1881). The sentence (Περὲ διαίτης, i. 5): καὶ τὰ μὲν πρήσσουσιν οὐκ οἴδασιν, ἃ δὲ οὐ πρήσσουσι δοκέουσιν εἰδέναι" καὶ τὰ μὲν ὁρέουσιν οὐ γινώσκουσιν, ἀλλ᾽ ὅμως αὐτοῖσι πάντα γίνεται. . . Kal ἃ βούλονται καὶ ἃ μὴ βούλονται, has the true Herakleitean ring. This, too, can hardly have had another author : ** They trust to their eyes rather than to their understanding, though their eyes are not fit to judge even of the things that are seen. But I speak these things from understanding.” These words are positively grotesque in
the mouth of the medical compiler ; but we are accustomed to hear such things from the Ephesian. Other examples which may be Herakleitean are
Correlation of opposites.
186 Early Greek Philosophy
80. There are a number of Herakleitean fragments
which form a class by themselves, and are among the
most striking of all the utterances that have come
down to us. Their common characteristic is, that
they assert in the most downright way the identity of
various things which are usually regarded as opposites.
The clue to their meaning is to be found in the account
already given of the assertion that day and night are
one. We have seen that Herakleitos meant to say,
not that day was night or that night was day, but
that they were two sides of the same process, namely,
the oscillation of the “measures” of fire and water,
and that neither would be possible without the other.
Any explanation that can be given of night will also be
an explanation of day, and vwzce versa; for it will be
an account of that which is common to both, and
manifests itself now as one and now as the other.
Moreover, it is just because it has manifested itself in
the one form that it must next appear in the other ;
for this is required by the law of compensation or
Justice.
This is only a particular application of the universal
principle that the primary fire is one even in its
division. It itself is, even in its unity, both surfeit
and want, war and peace (fr. 36). In other words, the
“satiety ἢ which makes fire pass into other forms, which
makes it seek “rest in change” (frs. 82, 83), and “ hide
itself” (fr. 10) in the “ hidden attunement ” of opposition,
is only one side of the process. The other is the
“want” which leads it to consume the bright vapour as
fuel. The upward path is nothing without the down-
the image of the two men sawing wood—‘‘ one pushes, the other ‘sual —and the illustration from the art of writing.
Herakleitos of Ephesos 187
ward (fr. 69). If either were to cease, the other would
cease too, and the world would disappear ; for it takes
both to make an apparently stable reality,
All other utterances of the kind are to be explained
in the same way. If there were no cold, there would
be no heat ; for a thing can only grow warm if, and in
so far as, itis already cold. And the same thing applies
to the opposition of wet and dry (fr. 39). These, it
will be observed, are just the two primary oppositions
of Anaximander, and Herakleitos is showing that the
war between them is really peace, for it is the common
element in them (fr. 62) which appears as strife, and
that very strife is justice, and not, as Anaximander had
taught, an injustice which they commit one against the
other, and which must be expiated by a reabsorption of
both in their common ground.' The strife itself is the
common ground (fr. 62), and is eternal.
The most startling of these sayings is that which
affirms that good and evil are the same (fr. 57). This
does not mean in the least, however, that good is evil
or that evil is good, but simply that they are the two
inseparable halves of one and the same thing. <A
thing can become good only in so far as it is already
evil, and evil only in so far as it is already good, and
everything depends on the contrast. The illustration
given in. fr. 58 shows this clearly. Torture, one would
say, was an evil, and yet it is made a good by the
presence of another evil, namely, disease; as is shown
by the fact that surgeons expect a fee for inflicting
it upon their patients. Justice, on the other hand,
which is a good, would be altogether unknown were
it not for the existence of injustice, which is an evil
1 Chap. I. § 16.
188 Early Greek Philosophy
( 60). And that is why it is not good for men to
get everything they wish (fr. 104). Just as the cessa-
tion of strife in the world would mean its destruction,
so the disappearance of hunger, disease, and weariness
would mean the disappearance of satisfaction, health, and rest.
This leads to a theory of relativity which prepares
he way for the doctrine of Protagoras, that “ Man is
he measure of all things.” ἢ _ Sea-water is good for fish
and bad for men (fr. 52), and so with many other
hings. At the same time, Herakleitos is not a believer
in absolute relativity. The process of the world is not
merely a circle, but an “upward and downward path.”
At the upper end, where the two paths meet, we have
he pure fire, in which, as there is no separation, there
is no relativity. We are told expressly that, while
Ο man some things are evil and some things are good, -
all things are good to God (fr.61). Now by God there
is no doubt that Herakleitos meant Fire. He also
calls it the “one wise,” and perhaps said that it
“knows all things.” There can hardly be any question
hat what he meant to say was that in it the opposi-
tion and relativity which are universal in the world
disappear. It is doubtless to this that frs. 96, 97, and
98 refer.
The Wise.
81. Herakleitos speaks of “ wisdom” or the “ wise ” n two senses. We have seen already that he said
wisdom was “something apart from everything else”
1 Plato’s exposition of the relativity of knowledge in the 7heaetetus (152
ἃ sqq.) can hardly go back to Herakleitos himself, but is meant to show how Herakleiteanism might naturally give rise to such a doctrine. If the soul is a stream and things are a stream, then of course knowledge is relative. Very possibly the later Herakleiteans had worked out the theory in this direction, but in the days of Herakleitos himself the problem of know- ledge had not yet arisen. ;
Herakleitos of Ephesos 189
(fr. 18), meaning by it the perception of the unity of the _ many ; and he also applies the term to that unity itself | regarded as the “ thought that directs the course of all things.” This is synonymous with the pure fire which is not differentiated into two parts, one taking the upward and the other the downward path. That alone has wisdom; the partial things we see have not. We ourselves are only wise in so far as we are fiery (fr. 74). i 82. With certain reservations, Herakleitos was pre- Theology. pared to call the one Wisdom by the name of Zeus. “Such, at least, appears to be the meaning of fr. 65. What these reservations were, it is easy to guess. It is not, of course, to be pictured in the form of aman. In saying this, Herakleitos would only have been repeating what had already been laid down by Anaximander and Xenophanes. | He agrees further with Xenophanes in . holding that this “god,” if it is to be called so, is one; but his polemic against popular religion was directed rather against the rites and ceremonies themselves than their mere mythological outgrowth. He gives a list (fr. 124) of some of the most characteristic religious figures of his time, and the context in which the fragment is quoted shows that he in some way threatened them with the wrath to come. He comments upon the absurdity of praying to images (fr. 126), and the strange idea that blood-guiltiness can be washed out by the shedding of blood (fr. 130). He seems also to have said that it was absurd to celebrate the worship of Dionysos by cheerful and licentious ceremonies, while Hades was propitiated by gloomy rites (fr. 127). According to the mystic doctrine itself, the two were really one; and the one Wisdom ought to be worshipped in its integrity.
Ethics of Herakleitos.
190 Early Greek Philosophy
The few fragments which deal with theology and
religion hardly suggest to us that Herakleitos was in
sympathy with the religious revival of the time, and yet
we have been asked to consider his system “in the
light of the idea of the mysteries.” ?
is called to the fact that he was “ king” of Ephesos,
that is, priest of the branch of the Eleusinian mysteries
Our attention
established in that city, which was also connected in
some way with the worship of Artemis or the Great
Mother.” These statements may be true; but, even if
they are, what follows? We ought surely to have
learnt from Lobeck by this time that there was no
“idea” in the mysteries at all; and on this point
the results of recent anthropological research have
abundantly confirmed those of philological and
historical inquiry.
83. The moral teaching of Herakleitos has some-
times been regarded as an anticipation of the “ common-
sense” theory of Ethics.2 The “common” upon which
Herakleitos insists is, nevertheless, something very
different from common sense, for which, indeed, he
had the greatest possible contempt (fr. PET). aes
in fact, his strongest objection to “the many,” that
they live each in his own world (fr. 95), as if they
had a private wisdom of their own (fr. 92).; and public opinion is therefore just the opposite of “the common.”
The Ethics of Herakleitos are to be regarded as
a corollary of his anthropological and cosmological
views. Their chief requirement is that we keep our
1 E. Pfleiderer, Die Philosophie des Heraklit von Ephesus im Lichte der Mysterienidee (1886).