Chapter 1. HERACLITUS
Heraclitus,
son of Bloson or, according to some, of Heracon, was a native of
Ephesus. He flourished in the 69th Olympiad.
1 He was lofty-minded beyond all other men,
2 and
over-weening, as is clear from his book in which he says : "Much
learning does not teach understanding ; else would it have taught
Hesiod and Pythagoras, or, again, Xenophanes and Hecataeus."
3 For "this one thing is wisdom, to
understand thought, as that which guides all the world
everywhere."
4 And he used to say
that "Homer deserved to be chased out of the lists and beaten with
rods, and Archilochus likewise."
5
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2]
Again he would say : "There is more need to
extinguish insolence than an outbreak of fire,"
6 and "The people must fight for the law as for
citywalls."
7 He attacks the
Ephesians, too, for banishing his friend Hermodorus : he says :
"The Ephesians
would do well to end their
lives, every grown man of them, and leave the city to beardless
boys, for that they have driven out Hermodorus, the worthiest man
among them, saying, `We will have none who is worthiest among us ;
or if there be any such, let him go elsewhere and consort with
others.'"
8 And when he was
requested by them to make laws, he scorned the request because the
state was already in the grip of a bad constitution.
[
3]
He would retire
to the temple of Artemis and play at knuckle-bones with the boys ;
and when the Ephesians stood round him and looked on, "Why, you
rascals," he said, "are you astonished? Is it not better to do this
than to take part in your civil life ?"
Finally, he became a
hater of his kind and wandered on the mountains, and there he
continued to live, making his diet of grass and herbs. However, when
this gave him dropsy, he made his way back to the city and put this
riddle to the physicians, whether they were competent to create a
drought after heavy rain. They could make nothing of this, whereupon
he buried himself in a cowshed, expecting that the noxious damp
humour would be drawn out of him by the warmth of the manure. But,
as even this was of no avail, he died at the age of sixty.
[
4]
There is a piece of my own about him as follows
9 :
Often have I
wondered how it came about that Heraclitus endured to live in this
miserable fashion and then to die. For a fell disease flooded his
body with water, quenched the light in his eyes and brought on
darkness.
Hermippus, too, says that he asked the doctors
whether anyone could by emptying the intestines draw off the
moisture ; and when they said it was
impossible, he put himself in the sun and bade his servants
plaster him over with cow-dung. Being thus stretched and prone, he
died the next day and was buried in the market-place. Neanthes of
Cyzicus states that, being unable to tear off the dung, he remained
as he was and, being unrecognizable when so transformed, he was
devoured by dogs.
[
5]
He was exceptional from his boyhood ; for
when a youth he used to say that he knew nothing, although when he
was grown up he claimed that he knew everything. He was nobody's
pupil, but he declared that he "inquired of himself,"
10 and learned everything from himself. Some,
however, had said that he had been a pupil of Xenophanes, as we
learn from Sotion, who also tells us that Ariston in his book
On Heraclitus declares that he was cured of the
dropsy and died of another disease. And Hippobotus has the same
story.
As to the work which passes as his, it is a continuous treatise
On Nature, but is divided into
three discourses, one on the universe, another on politics, and a
third on theology.
[
6]
This book he deposited in the temple of Artemis
and, according to some, he deliberately made it the more obscure in
order that none but adepts should approach it, and lest familiarity
should breed contempt. Of our philosopher Timon
11 gives a sketch in these words
12 :
In their midst
uprose shrill, cuckoo-like, a mob-reviler, riddling Heraclitus.
Theophrastus puts it down to melancholy that some parts of his
work are half-finished, while other parts make a strange medley. As
a proof of his magnanimity Antisthenes in his
Successions of
Philosophers cites the fact that he renounced his
claim to the kingship in favour of his brother. So great fame did
his book win that a sect was founded and called the Heracliteans,
after him.
[
7]
Here is a general summary of his doctrines. All
things are composed of fire, and into fire they are again resolved ;
further, all things come about by destiny, and existent things are
brought into harmony by the clash of opposing currents ; again, all
things are filled with souls and divinities. He has also given an
account of all the orderly happenings in the universe, and declares
the sun to be no larger than it appears. Another of his sayings is :
"Of soul thou shalt never find boundaries, not if thou trackest it
on every path ; so deep is its cause."
13 Self-conceit he used to call a falling sickness (epilepsy)
and eyesight a lying sense.
14
Sometimes, however, his utterances are clear and distinct, so that
even the dullest can easily understand and derive therefrom
elevation of soul. For brevity and weightiness his exposition is
incomparable.
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8]
Coming now to his particular tenets, we may
state them as follows : fire is the element, all things are exchange
for fire and come into being by rarefaction and condensation
15 ; but of this
he gives no clear explanation. All things come into being by
conflict of opposites, and the sum of things flows like a stream.
Further, all that is is limited and forms one world. And it is
alternately born from fire and again resolved into fire in fixed
cycles to all eternity, and this is determined by destiny. Of the
opposites that which tends to birth or creation is called war and
strife, and that which tends to destruction by fire is called
concord and peace.
16 Change he called
a pathway up and
down, and this determines the birth of the world.
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9]
For fire by
contracting turns into moisture, and this condensing turns into
water ; water again when congealed turns into earth. This process he
calls the downward path. Then again earth is liquefied, and thus
gives rise to water, and from water the rest of the series is
derived. He reduces nearly everything to exhalation from the sea.
This process is the upward path. Exhalations arise from earth as
well as from sea ; those from sea are bright and pure, those from
earth dark. Fire is fed by the bright exhalations, the moist element
by the others. He does not make clear the nature of the surrounding
element. He says, however, that there are in it bowls with their
concavities turned towards us, in which the bright exhalations
collect and produce flames. These are the stars.
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10]
The flame of the
sun is the brightest and the hottest ; the other stars are further
from the earth and for that reason give it less light and heat. The
moon, which is nearer to the earth, traverses a region which is not
pure. The sun, however, moves in a clear and untroubled region, and
keeps a proportionate distance from us. That is why it gives us more
heat and light. Eclipses of the sun and moon occur when the bowls
are turned upwards ; the monthly phases of the moon are due to the
bowl turning round in its place little by little. Day and night,
months, seasons and years, rains and winds and other similar
phenomena are accounted for by the various exhalations. Thus the
bright exhalation, set aflame in the hollow orb of the sun, produces
day, the opposite exhalation when it has
got
the mastery causes night ; the increase of warmth due to the bright
exhalation produces summer, whereas the preponderance of moisture
due to the dark exhalation brings about winter. His explanations of
other phenomena are in harmony with this. He gives no account of the
nature of the earth, nor even of the bowls. These, then, were his
opinions.
The story told by Ariston of Socrates, and his
remarks when he came upon the book of Heraclitus, which Euripides
brought him, I have mentioned in my Life of Socrates.
17
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12]
However, Seleucus the grammarian says that a certain
Croton relates in his book called
The Diver
that the said work of Heraclitus was first brought into Greece by
one Crates, who further said it required a Delian diver not to be
drowned in it. The title given to it by some is
The
Muses,18 by others
Concerning Nature ; but Diodotus calls it
19
A helm
unerring for the rule of life ;
others "a guide of
conduct, the keel of the whole world, for one and all alike." We are
told that, when asked why he kept silence, he replied, "Why, to let
you chatter." Darius, too, was eager to make his acquaintance, and
wrote to him as follows
20 :
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13]
"King Darius, son of Hystaspes, to Heraclitus the wise man of
Ephesus, greeting.
"You are the author of a treatise
On Nature which
is hard to
understand and hard to interpret. In certain parts, if it be
interpreted word for word, it seems to contain a power of
speculation on the whole universe and all that goes on within it,
which depends upon motion most divine ; but for the most part
judgement is suspended, so that even those who are the most
conversant with literature are at a loss to know what is the right
interpretation of your work. Accordingly King Darius, son of
Hystaspes, wishes to enjoy your instruction and Greek culture. Come
then with all speed to see me at my palace.
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14]
For the Greeks as a rule
are not prone to mark their wise men ; nay, they neglect their
excellent precepts which make for good hearing and learning. But at
my court there is secured for you every privilege and daily
conversation of a good and worthy kind, and a life in keeping with
your counsels."
"Heraclitus of Ephesus to King Darius, son of
Hystaspes, greeting.
"All men upon earth hold aloof from
truth and justice, while, by reason of wicked folly, they devote
themselves to avarice and thirst for popularity. But I, being
forgetful of all wickedness, shunning the general satiety which is
closely joined with envy, and because I have a horror of splendour,
could not come to Persia, being content with little, when that
little is to my mind."
So independent was he even when
dealing with a king.
[
15]
Demetrius, in his book on
Men of the Same Name, says that he despised even
the Athenians, although held by them in the highest estimation ;
and,
notwithstanding that the Ephesians thought
little of him, he preferred his own home the more. Demetrius of
Phalerum, too, mentions him in his
Defence of
Socrates21; and the commentators on his work are very numerous,
including as they do Antishenes and Heraclides of Pontus, Cleanthes
and Sphaerus the Stoic, and again Pausanias who was called the
imitator of Heraclitus, Nicomedes, Dionysius, and, among the
grammarians, Diodotus. The latter affirms that it is not a treatise
upon nature, but upon government, the physical part serving merely
for illustration.
22
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16]
Hieronymus tells us that
Scythinus, the satirical poet, undertook to put the discourse of
Heraclitus into verse. He is the subject of many epigrams, and
amongst them of this one
23:
Heraclitus am I. Why do ye drag me up and
down, ye illiterate? It was not for you I toiled, but for such as
understand me. One man in my sight is a match for thirty thousand,
but the countless hosts do not make a single one. This I proclaim,
yea in the halls of Persephone.
Another runs as follows
24:
Do not
be in too great a hurry to get to the end of Heraclitus the
Ephesian's book : the path is hard to travel. Gloom is there and
darkness devoid of light. But if an initiate be your guide, the path
shines brighter than sunlight.
[
17]
Five men have borne the name
of Heraclitus : (1) our philosopher ; (2) a lyric poet, who wrote a
hymn of praise to the twelve gods ; (3) an elegiac
poet of Halicarnassus, on whom Callimachus wrote the following
epitaph
25:
They told me, Heraclitus, they told me you were
dead,
They brought me bitter news to hear and bitter tears to
shed.
I wept as I remembered how often you and I
Had
tired the sun with talking and sent him down the sky.
And now
that thou art lying, my dear old Carian guest,
A handful of
grey ashes, long, long ago at rest,
Still are thy pleasant
voices, thy nightingales, awake ;
For Death, he taketh all
away, but them he cannot take ;
26
(4) a Lesbian
who wrote a history of Macedonia ;
(5) a jester who adopted
this profession after having been a musician.