CHAPTER III HERAKLEITOS OF EPHESOS · 5

(124) Night-walkers, Magians, priests of Bakchos and priestesses of the wine-vat, mystery-mongers....

(125) The mysteries practised among men are unholy mysteries. R. P. 48.

(126) And they pray to these images, as if one were to talk with a man’s house, knowing not what gods or heroes are. R. P. 49 a.

(127) For if it were not to Dionysos that they made a procession and sang the shameful phallic hymn, they would be acting most shamelessly. But Hades is the same as Dionysos 156in whose honour they go mad and keep the feast of the wine-vat. R. P. 49.

(129, 130) They vainly purify themselves by defiling themselves with blood, just as if one who had stepped into the mud were to wash his feet in mud. Any man who marked him doing thus, would deem him mad. R. P. 49 a.

66. It will be seen that some of these fragments are far from clear, and there are probably not a few of which the meaning will never be recovered. We naturally turn, then, to the doxographers for a clue; but, as ill-luck will have it, they are far less instructive with regard to Herakleitos than we have found them in other cases. We have, in fact, two great difficulties to contend with. The first is the unusual weakness of the doxographical tradition itself. Hippolytos, upon whom we can generally rely for a fairly accurate account of what Theophrastos really said, derived the material for his first four chapters, which treat of Thales, Pythagoras, Herakleitos, and Empedokles, not from the excellent epitome which he afterwards used, but from a biographical compendium,[366] which consisted for the most part of apocryphal anecdotes and apophthegms. It was based, further, on some writer of Successions who regarded Herakleitos and Empedokles as Pythagoreans. They are therefore placed side by side, and their doctrines are hopelessly mixed up together. The link between Herakleitos and the Pythagoreans was Hippasos of Metapontion, in whose system, as we know, fire played an important part. 157Theophrastos, following Aristotle, had spoken of the two in the same sentence, and this was enough to put the writers of Successions off the track.[367] We are forced, then, to look to the more detailed of the two accounts of the opinions of Herakleitos given in Diogenes,[368] which goes back to the Vetusta Placita, and is, fortunately, pretty full and accurate. All our other sources are more or less tainted.

The second difficulty which we have to face is even more serious. Most of the commentators on Herakleitos mentioned in Diogenes were Stoics,[369] and it is certain that their paraphrases were sometimes taken for the original. Now, the Stoics held the Ephesian in peculiar veneration, and sought to interpret him as far as possible in accordance with their own system. Further, they were fond of “accommodating”[370] the views of earlier thinkers to their own, and this has had serious consequences. In particular, the Stoic theories of the λόγος and the ἐκπύρωσις are constantly ascribed to Herakleitos by our authorities, and the very fragments are adulterated with scraps of Stoic terminology.

67. Herakleitos looks down not only on the mass of men, but on all previous inquirers into nature. 158This must mean that he believed himself to have attained insight into some truth which had not hitherto been recognised, though it was, as it were, staring men in the face (fr. 93). Clearly, then, if we wish to get at the central thing in his teaching, we must try to find out what he was thinking of when he launched into those denunciations of human dulness and ignorance.[371] The answer seems to be given in two fragments, 18 and 45. From them we gather that the truth hitherto ignored is that the many apparently independent and conflicting things we know are really one, and that, on the other hand, this one is also many. The “strife of opposites” is really an “attunement” (ἁρμονία). From this it follows that wisdom is not a knowledge of many things, but the perception of the underlying unity of the warring opposites. That this really was the fundamental thought of Herakleitos is stated by Philo. He says: “For that which is made up of both the opposites is one; and, when the one is divided, the opposites are disclosed. Is not this just what the Greeks say their great and much belauded Herakleitos put in the forefront of his philosophy as summing it all up, and boasted of as a new discovery?”[372] We shall take the elements of this theory one by one, and see how they are to be understood.

68. Anaximander had taught already that the opposites were separated out from the Boundless, but passed away into it once more, so paying the penalty for their unjust encroachments on one another. It is 159here implied that there is something wrong in the war of opposites, and that the existence of the Many is a breach in the unity of the One. The truth which Herakleitos proclaimed was that there is no One without the Many, and no Many without the One. The world is at once one and many, and it is just the “opposite tension” of the Many that constitutes the unity of the One.

The credit of having been the first to see this is expressly assigned to Herakleitos by Plato. In the Sophist (242 d), the Eleatic stranger, after explaining how the Eleatics maintained that what we call many is really one, proceeds:—

But certain Ionian and (at a later date) certain Sicilian Muses remarked that it was safest to unite these two things, and to say that reality is both many and one, and is kept together by Hate and Love. “For,” say the more severe Muses, “in its division it is always being brought together” (cf. fr. 59); while the softer Muses relaxed the requirement that this should always be so, and said that the All was alternately one and at peace through the power of Aphrodite, and many and at war with itself because of something they called Strife.

In this passage the Ionian Muses stand, of course, for Herakleitos, and the Sicilian for Empedokles. We remark also that the differentiation of the one into many, and the integration of the many into one, are both eternal and simultaneous, and that this is the ground upon which the system of Herakleitos is contrasted with that of Empedokles. We shall come back to that point again. Meanwhile we confine ourselves to this, that, according to Plato, Herakleitos taught that reality was at once many and one.

We must be careful, however, not to imagine that 160what Herakleitos thus discovered was a logical principle. This was the mistake of Lassalle’s book.[373] The identity in and through difference which he proclaimed was purely physical; logic did not yet exist, and as the principle of identity had not been formulated, it would have been impossible to protest against an abstract application of it. The identity which he explains as consisting in difference is simply that of the primary substance in all its manifestations. This identity had been realised already by the Milesians, but they had found a difficulty in the difference. Anaximander had treated the strife of opposites as an “injustice,” and what Herakleitos set himself to show was that, on the contrary, it was the highest justice (fr. 62).

69. All this made it necessary for him to seek out a new primary substance. He wanted not merely something out of which the diversified world we know might 161conceivably be made, or from which opposites could be “separated out,” but something which of its own nature would pass into everything else, while everything else would pass in turn into it. This he found in Fire, and it is easy to see why, if we consider the phenomenon of combustion, even as it appears to the plain man. The quantity of fire in a flame burning steadily appears to remain the same, the flame seems to be what we call a “thing.” And yet the substance of it is continually changing. It is always passing away in smoke, and its place is always being taken by fresh matter from the fuel that feeds it. This is just what we want. If we regard the world as an “ever-living fire” (fr. 20), we can understand how it is always becoming all things, while all things are always returning to it.[374]

70. This necessarily brings with it a certain way of 162looking at the change and movement of the world. Fire burns continuously and without interruption. It is therefore always consuming fuel and always liberating smoke. Everything is either mounting upwards to serve as fuel, or sinking downwards after having nourished the flame. It follows that the whole of reality is like an ever-flowing stream, and that nothing is ever at rest for a moment. The substance of the things we see is in constant change. Even as we look at them, some of the matter of which they are composed has already passed into something else, while fresh matter has come into them from another source. This theory is usually summed up, appropriately enough, in the phrase “All things are flowing” (πάντα ῥεῖ), though, as it happens, it cannot be proved that this is a quotation from Herakleitos. Plato, however, expresses the idea quite clearly. “Nothing ever is, everything is becoming”; “All things are in motion like streams”; “All things are passing, and nothing abides”; “Herakleitos says somewhere that all things pass and naught abides; and, comparing things to the current of a river, he says that you cannot step twice into the same stream” (cf. fr. 41)—these are the terms in which he describes the system. And Aristotle says the same thing, “All things are in motion,” “nothing steadfastly is.”[375] Herakleitos held, in fact, that any given thing, however stable in appearance, was merely a section in the stream, and that the matter composing it was never the same in any two consecutive moments of time. We shall see presently how he conceived this process to operate; meanwhile we remark that the idea was 163not altogether novel, and that it is hardly the central point in the system of Herakleitos. The Milesians held a similar view. The flux of Herakleitos was at most more unceasing and universal.

71. Herakleitos appears to have worked out the details of the perpetual flux with reference to the theories of Anaximenes.[376] It is unlikely, however, that he explained the transformations of matter by means of rarefaction and condensation.[377] Theophrastos, it appears, suggested that he did; but he allowed it was by no means clear. The passage from Diogenes which we are about to quote has faithfully preserved this touch.[378] In the fragments, at any rate, we find nothing about rarefaction and condensation. The expression used is “exchange” (fr. 22); and this is certainly a very good name for what happens when fire gives out smoke and takes in fuel instead.

It has been pointed out that, in default of Hippolytos, our best account of the Theophrastean doxography of Herakleitos is the fuller of the two accounts given in Laertios Diogenes. It is as follows:—

His opinions on particular points are these:—

He held that Fire was the element, and that all things were an exchange for fire, produced by condensation and rarefaction. But he explains nothing clearly. All things were produced in opposition, and all things were in flux like a river.

The all is finite and the world is one. It arises from fire, and is consumed again by fire alternately through all eternity in certain cycles. This happens according to fate. That which leads to the becoming of the opposites is called War and Strife; that which leads to the final conflagration is Concord and Peace.

164He called change the upward and the downward path, and held that the world comes into being in virtue of this. When fire is condensed it becomes moist, and when compressed it turns to water; water being congealed turns to earth, and this he calls the downward path. And, again, the earth is in turn liquefied, and from it water arises, and from that everything else; for he refers almost everything to the evaporation from the sea. This is the path upwards. R. P. 36.

He held, too, that exhalations arose both from the sea and the land; some bright and pure, others dark. Fire was nourished by the bright ones, and moisture by the others.

He does not make it clear what is the nature of that which surrounds the world. He held, however, that there were bowls in it with the concave sides turned towards us, in which the bright exhalations were collected and produced flames. These were the heavenly bodies.

The flame of the sun was the brightest and warmest; for the other heavenly bodies were more distant from the earth; and for that reason gave less light and heat. The moon, on the other hand, was nearer the earth; but it moved through an impure region. The sun moved in a bright and unmixed region, and at the same time was at just the right distance from us. That is why it gives more heat and light. The eclipses of the sun and moon were due to the turning of the bowls upwards, while the monthly phases of the moon were produced by a gradual turning of its bowl.

Day and night, months and seasons and years, rains and winds, and things like these, were due to the different exhalations. The bright exhalation, when ignited in the circle of the sun, produced day, and the preponderance of the opposite exhalations produced night. The increase of warmth proceeding from the bright exhalation produced summer, and the preponderance of moisture from the dark exhalation produced winter. He assigns the causes of other things in conformity with this.

As to the earth, he makes no clear statement about its nature, any more than he does about that of the bowls.

These, then, were his opinions. R. P. 39 b.

165It is obvious that, if we can trust this passage, it is of the greatest possible value; and that, upon the whole, we can trust it is shown by the fact that it follows the exact order of topics to which all the doxographies derived from the great work of Theophrastos adhere. First we have the primary substance, then the world, then the heavenly bodies, and lastly, meteorological phenomena. We conclude, then, that it may be accepted with the exceptions, firstly, of the probably erroneous conjecture of Theophrastos as to rarefaction and condensation mentioned above; and secondly, of some pieces of Stoical interpretation which come from the Vetusta Placita.

Let us look at the details of the theory. The pure fire, we are told, is to be found chiefly in the sun. This, like the other heavenly bodies, is a trough or bowl, or perhaps a sort of boat, with the concave side turned towards us, in which the bright exhalations from the sea collect and burn. How does the fire of the sun pass into other forms? If we look at the fragments which deal with the downward path, we find that the first transformation that it undergoes is into sea, and we are further told that half of the sea is earth and half of it πρηστήρ (fr. 21). The full meaning of this we shall see presently, but we must settle at once what πρηστήρ is. Many theories have been advanced upon the subject; but, so far as I know, no one[379] has yet proposed to take the word in the sense which it always bears elsewhere, that, namely, of hurricane accompanied by a fiery waterspout.[380] Yet surely this is 166just what is wanted. It is amply attested that Herakleitos explained the rise of the sea to fire by means of the bright evaporations; and we want a similar meteorological explanation of the passing of the fire back into sea. We want, in fact, something which will stand equally for the smoke produced by the burning of the sun and for the immediate stage between fire and water. What could serve the turn better than a fiery waterspout? It sufficiently resembles smoke to be accounted for as the product of the sun’s combustion, and it certainly comes down in the form of water. And this interpretation becomes practically certain when taken in connexion with the report of Aetios as to the Herakleitean theory of πρηστῆρες. They were due, we are told, “to the kindling and extinction of clouds.”[381] In other words, the bright vapour, after kindling in the bowl of the sun and going out again, reappears as the dark fiery storm-cloud, and so passes once more into sea. At the next stage we find water continually passing into earth. We are already familiar with this idea (§ 10), and no more need be said about it. Turning to the “upward path,” we find that the earth is liquefied in the same proportion as the sea becomes earth, so that the sea is still “measured by the same tale” (fr. 23). Half of it is earth and half of it is πρηστήρ (fr. 21). This must mean that, at any given moment, half of the sea is taking the downward 167path, and has just been fiery storm-cloud, while half of it is going up, and has just been earth. In proportion as the sea is increased by rain, water passes into earth; in proportion as the sea is diminished by evaporation, it is fed by the earth. Lastly, the ignition of the bright vapour from the sea in the bowl of the sun completes the circle of the “upward and downward path.”

72. The question now arises, How is it that, in spite of this constant flux, things appear relatively stable? The answer of Herakleitos was that it is owing to the observance of the “measures,” in virtue of which the aggregate bulk of each form of matter in the long run remains the same, though its substance is constantly changing. Certain “measures” of the “ever-living fire” are always being kindled, while like “measures” are always going out (fr. 20); and these measures the sun will not exceed. All things are “exchanged” for fire and fire for all things (fr. 22), and this implies that for everything it takes, fire will give as much. “The sun will not exceed his measures” (fr. 29).