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About Google Book Search Google's mission is to organize the world's information and to make it universally accessible and useful. Google Book Search helps readers discover the world's books while helping authors and publishers reach new audiences. You can search through the full text of this book on the web at |http: //books .google .com/I 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 1889 3 [Reprinted frora the Amebioan Journal of Psyoholoot, 1888.] A Thesis Accbpted for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the Johns Hopkins University, 1888. 118172 • • - • • • • • •- • • •••• • • , «» "'*• • •»• •• •» - "• - » «f ta • ••• • ••« • • • • • • -• • • • _• PBESS OF ISAAO FBIEDENWALD, BALTIMORE. 01 ^iovrsc- I. 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. II. 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. I. 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. II. 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. ^Modern Heraclitic literature belongs wholly to the present century. The most important works are the following : — Schleiermacher yHerakleitos, der Dunkle von Ephesos, in Wolf and Buttmann's Museunj der Alterthumswissenschaft, Vol. I,(1807jpp. 313-533, and in Schleiermacher's Sammt. Werke, Abth. Ill, Vol. 2, Berlin, Vl838,)pp. 1-146 ;—Qjik. Bemays Heraclitea, /Bonn, 1848^HeraklitischeStudien, intheRhein. Mus., new series, VII, pp. 90-116, 1850 ; Neue Bruchstiicke des Heraklit, ibid. IX, pp. 241-269, 1854 ; Die Hera- klitischen Brief e, Berlin, 1869 ;-QFerd. Lassalle]) Die Philosophie Herakleitos des Dunkeln von Ephesos, 2 vols., (Berlin, 1858y|"^Paul Schuster) Heraklit von Ephesus, in Actis soc. phil. Lips. ed. Fr. Ritschelius, (l873>j[II, 1-397 ;-^eichmuller^Neue Stud. z. Gesch. der Begnflfe, Heft I, Glotha^876, and II, 1878)-^y water : Heracliti Ephesii Reliquiae, Oxford, 1877)-^dmund Pfleiderer\ Die Philosophie des Heraklit vgn Ephesus im Lichter der My sterienidee, (Berlin, 1886 j-^Eduard Zeller : Die Philosophie der Qriechen^Bd. I, pp. 566-677. /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/) Lassalle. (Lassalle, in two ponderous volumes )noted above (page 1), Vjiade the first and most elaborate attempt to reconstruct the system of the Ephesian philosopher.) His work exhibits immense labor and study, and (extended research in the discovery of new fragments and of ancient testimony^together with some acuteness in their use. ^assalle has a very distinct view of the philosophy of Heraclitus. But it is not an original view. It is, in fact, nothing but an expansion of the short account of Heraclitus in Hegel's History of Phil- osophy, although Lassalle makes no mention of him,y except to quote upon his title-page Hegel's well-known motto, ^* Es ist kein Satz des Heraklit, den ich nicht in meine Logik aufgenommen." ^egel's conception of Heraclitus is, in a word, as follows : Heraclitus' ♦ Absolute was the unity of being and non-being. His whole system was an expansion of the speculative thought of the principle of pure becoming. He appre- hended, and was the first to apprehend, the Absolute HISTORICAL AND CRITICAL. 5 as a process, as the unity of opposites, as dialectic itself. His great contribution was the speculative transition from the being of the Eleatics to the idea of becoming?) Now how does Hegel support this position ? There is in his Logic but one passage referring to Hera- plitus. There he says, *^ Glancing at the principle of the Eleatics, Heraclitus then goes on to say, ^ Being no more is than non -being ' (oudeu fiaXXov to 8v too fxi] oi^roc iau), a statement expressing the negative nature of abstract being and its identity with non-being'' (Wallace, The Logic of Hegel, p. 144 ; cp. Science of Logic, Hegel's Werke, Vol. 3, p. 80). Hegel omits, in the Logic, to give the reference to the above quotation, but in his History of Philosophy (Werke, Vol. 13, p. 332) he quotes the same passage with the reference. It is to Aristotle, Metaph. i. 4. We turn to the same and find that it is a passage which Aristotle quotes from the Atomists, Democritus and Leucippus, and that it has not the slightest referenc e to Heraclitus, who, indeed, is not mentioned in tlie same chapter. This is rather discouraging, but the account in the History of Philosophy, to which we now turn, is scarcely less so. There Hegel begins his exposition of Heraclitus as follows : **1. Das allgemeine Princip. Dieser kiihne Qeist (Heraclitus) hat zuerst das tiefe Wort gesagt, * Das Seyn ist nicht mehr als das Nichtseyn,' es ist ebenso wenig, Oder, * Seyn und Nichts sey dasselbe,' das Wesen sey die Veranderung " (Gesch. d. Phil. Vol. 13, p. 332). Now it happens that Heraclitus said nothing of the kind. As references Hegel gives Aristotle, Meta- phys. i. 4; iv. 7; iv. 3. The first passage, as we have already seen, is from the Atomists. The second turns out upon examination to be simply the expression, ^ 6 HBRACLITUS. ** All things are and are not" {nduza elvat xai fjtrj ehat)y and the third is a statement of Aristotle that some people supposed Heraclitus to have said that the same thing could both be and not be the same. Moreover, neither of these passages is Heraclitic in form, and they are not even mentioned in Bywater's edition. The only expression of Heraclitus that resembles in form the above passage from Aristotle is that of frag. ^ 81, " Into the same river we step and we do not step. ^ ^ We Are and we. a re not." The over-interpretation by OO is which this simple passage, expressing incessant phys- . V '- ical change^ is transformed into the logical principle --1 ^^ . ■ / of Hegel, "Das Seyn ist nicht mehr als das Nicht- ^ "^ seyn," "Sgyi V und Nirhtn nny flnnnMb fi," is audacious --at least. Furthermore, we may say here in passing, that neither the expressions zb 8v, (jltj ov, nor even rb ^vi^'l xq-vofjiei^ov, occur in any genuine saying of Heraclitus; - V.V. .4 although if they did occur, it would be easy to show cVv-t-. /that they could not mean at all what Hegel meant by (VlVu.f'1/f ^^^^Sy non-being, and becoming. Even the Eleatic '^j Being was not at all the same with that of Hegel, but ^ was finite, spherical, and something very much like that which we should call material. But Heraclitus, who indeed preceded Parmenides, said nothing of being nor of non-being, nor did he speak of becoming in the abstract, although the trustful reader of Hegel, Lassalle, or Ferrier, might well suppose he spoke of nothing else. That which these writers mistook for becoming was, as we shall see later, only physical change. With the loss of this comer-stone, the Hera- clitic support of the Hegelian Logic fails, and Hegel's boast that there was no sentence, of Heraclitus that his Logic had not taken up becomes rather ludicrous, especially if one will read through the remains of jVo-i <' HISTORICAL AND CRITICAL. 7 Heraclitus' work on Nature and search for his rich and varied thoughts in the Logic of Hegel. Returning now to Lassalle, the above principles are carried out more in detail as follows : The chief point in the philosophy of Heraclitus is that here first the formal notion of the speculative idea in general was grasped. With him first emerged the conception of pure thought defecated of the sensuous. His ground principle was the dialectical opposition of being and - non-being. The kernel and whole depth of his phil- osophy may be expressed in the one sentence, ** Only non-being is" (Lassalle, Vol. 1, p. 35). The unity of being and non-being is a unity of process (processi- rende Einheit). It is the unity of opposites, the idea of ^ becoming, the divine law, the yviofirj of the determining God (Id. Vol. 1, p. 24). Fire, strife, peace, time, neces- sity, harmony, the way up and down, the flux, justice, fate. Logos, are all different terms for this one idea (Id. Vol. 1, p. 57). Hence arises Heraclitus' obscurity. It is not a mere grammatical obscurity, as Schleier- macher, following Aristotle (Rhet. iii. 5, p. 1407, b. 14) thought; nor is it a willful obscurity, but it arises from the very nature of his great thought, which could not be enunciated in exact terms, but could only be suggested by such words as fire, time, etc., and so he labored on with one new symbol after another, vainly trying to express himself. The Heraclitic fire is a " metaphysical abstraction " — a pure process, " whose existence is pure self-annuU- "^ ing (sich aufheben), whose being is pure self -consump- tion (sich selbst verzehren) " (Lassalle, Vol. 1, p. 18). Most clearly, however, is the great thought of Hera- clitus shown in " the way up and down," which does not involve change of place, but only a logical process. 8 HERACLITUS. It is " nothing else '' than the change from being into non-being and the reverse. The way ^Wn is transi- tion into being ; the way up is the return into the pure and free negativity of non-being, motion in the undis- turbed ideal harmony (Id. Vol. 2, p. 241 jBf.). God, in his adequate form, is " nothing else " than pure negativity, the pure unity of process of opposites. Nature is only the corporeal manifestation of the law of the identity of opposites. It owes its existence to privation (ddcxcaX that is, to the injustice which pure becoming suffers when it becomes being (Id. Vol. 1, p. 138). The duadij/jua<7e<: of Heraclitus is not any vapor or sen- sible exhalation, but is " nothing else " than the way up, or the ix7r6pa)<7i<:, that is, the cessation of the sen- sible and the particular and the assumption of the real universal becoming. ^Auadufjuw/iiuae, Lassalle says, should be translated " processirend " (Id. Vol. 1, p. 144). The Heraclitic flux is the same as the way up and down. It is the dialectic of spacial being ; it is the unity of being and non-being as spacial ; it is the here which is not here. The Ttepd^ou of Heraclitus is not anything physical or spacial, but ** the universal real process of becoming," which works through the Logos or law of thought (Id. Vol. 1, p. 306). The Heraclitic Logos is the pure intelligible logical law of the identity in process (die processirende Iden- titat) of being and non-being. It is "nothing else" than the law of opposites and the change into the same (Id. Vol. 1, p. 327 ; Vol. 2, p. 265). The substance of the soul is identical with the sub- stance of nature. It is pure becoming which has in- corporated itself, embraced the way down. The dry or fiery soul is better than the moist because moisture HISTORICAL AND CRITICAL. 9 is " nothing else " than a symbol of the downward way. The soul that is moist has descended out of its pure self -annulling movement or negativity in process, into the sphere of the particular 'and determinate (Id. Vol. 1, pp. 180, 192). Heraclitus, in his desperate labor to express this idea, enters the sphere of religion. Dionysus and Hades are the same, he says (see frag. 127). That is, says Lassalle, Dionysus, the god of generation which repre- sents the descent of pure non-being into being, is iden- tical with Hades, the god of death ; and this fragment, which is a polemic against Dionysus, is really a polemic against being, which is inferior to non-being (Id. Vol. 1, p. 208). Knowledge consists in the recognition in each parti- cular thing of the two opposites which constitute its *nature (Id. Vol. 2, p. 272). Of ethics, the formal prin- ciple is self-realization or self -representation. It is the realization of what we are in ourselves or according to our inner nature. The ideal is separation from the sensible and particular and the realization of the uni- versar(Id. Vol. 2, p. 428 flf.). (i ^Such in brief outline is what Ferdinand Lassalle finds in Heraclitus' book On Nature. As an exposition of Heraclitus it is not worth the space we have given it, or any space, in fact ; but as one of the most beau- tiful illustrations of over-systemization, it is extremely valuable. Any formal refutation of his conception of Heraclitus is unnecessary, for almost the whole of it is without any foundation whatever. The expositions which are to follow, or even a slight reading of the fragments themselves, will sufficiently show how thor- oughly fantastic and arbitrary are his interpretations. Lassalle seems to have been misled partly by HegePs 10 HERACLITUS. misinterpretation of the passages from Aristotle/ not- iced above, V|tnd partly by the principle of opposition which nins through a nimaber of the sayings of Hera- clitus^an opposition which, as we shall see later, was wholly physical, and far more simple than the abstruse logical meaning given it by Lassalle. This German scholar had no power or no wish to put himself in the attitude of the Greek mind, which was as widely dif- ferent from his as possible. It was a mistake for this disciple of pure thought, bred in the stifling atmosphere of a nineteenth century Hegelian lecture-room, and powerless to transport himself out of it even in thought, to attempt to interpret the sentences of an ingenuous lover of Nature, who, five centuries before the Chris- tian era, lived and moved in the free air of Ephesus. In this we do not mean to say that the philosophy of Heraclitus was purely physical rather than metaphys-* ical, for we shall see that such was not the case, but primitive pre-Socratic metaphysics and the panlogism of Lassalle are as wide asunder as the poles. On this point, Benn, in the work already referred to, well says, " The Greek philosophers from Thales to Democritus did not even suspect the existence of those ethical and dialectical problems which long constituted the sole object of philosophical discussion " (Vol. 1, p. 4). Those who wish to trace Lassalle's errors further may compare, on his mistaken conception of the Hera- clitic fire, Zeller, Vol. 1, p. 591, 3^ ; Grote : Plato, Vol. 1, p. 33, note. On ^^the way up and down," com- pare Zeller, Vol. 1, p. 619, 1. On the flux, compare Schuster, p. 201 ; Zeller, Vol. 1, p. 577, 1. The characterization of Lassalle's book as a whole * The references to Zeller in the following pages are to the fourth German edition of Die Philosophic der Griechen. HISTORICAL AND CRITICAL. 11 is, that it is a striking example of great piiilosophic waste, turning as he does the rich and suggestive phil- osophy of the Ephesian into a wretched mouthful of Hegelian phrases. His citation of so many diverse sentences of Heraclitus, drawn from theology, ethics, nature, and man, and his discovery in all of them of his single ever-recurring notion of ** die reine umschlag- ende Identitat von Sein und Nichtsein," impresses us with the power which the tyranny of a single idea may have to so blur one's vision as to cause him to see that idea reflected in everything that is presented. ( It is not true, as Lassalle's motto goes, that there is no sen- tence of Heraclitus that Hegel has not incorporated in his Logic, but it is not far from the truth that there is no sentence of Heraclitus which Hegel and Lassalle have not either willfully or ignorantly perverted.^ Schuster. We will mentiop mow the work of Paul Schuster) (see above, p. 1). Q Schuster approaches the problem oi the interpretation of Heraclitus wi1;h the advantage of a rich philological and historical knowledge. He suf- fers a disadvantage, however, in the magnitude of the task he undertakes, which is nothing less than the reconstruction of the order and plan of the book of Heraclitus itself. The interpretation of the fragments, . he justly observes, depends upon the connection in which they occurred. It will be necessary, therefore, if we will grasp their true sense, to recover the plan of the original writing. Such a reconstruction Schuster holds to be possible, since by the law of selection, the fragments which have been preserved to us must have been the central thoughts of the original work. Con- trary to Schleiermacher, he accepts aa trustworthy the /l- 12 HERACLITUS* statement of Diogenes (Diog. Laert. ix. 5) that the book of Heraclitus was divided into three partsjor Logoi, the first concerning "the all," the second jfoli- .tical, the third theological, ^n this basis Schuster arranges the fragments, freely translated or rather paraphrased, and interspaced with the restored pro- gress of thought. The well known obscurity of our philosopher, Schuster, contrary to all other critics ex- cept Teichmtiller, supposes to have been partly, at least, intentional, as a precaution against persecution for atheism. O ^he distinctive feature of Schuster's conception of Heraclitus is that he was not a distruster of the senses, but- on the contrary thiB first philosopher who dared to base all knowledge upon sense experience. He was therefore the first of experimental philosophers/ To this idea the introduction of Heraclitus' book was devoted. The majority of people, says the Ephesian, have little interest in that which inunediately sur- rounds them, nor do they think to seek for knowledge by investigation of that with which they daily come in contact (Clement of Alex. Strom, ii. 2, p. 432 ; M. Aurelius iv. 46 ; cp. frags. 5, 93). Nevertheless, that which surrounds us is the source of knowledge. Nature is not irrational and dumb, but is an ever living Voice plainly revealing the law of the world. This Voice of Nature is the Heraclitic Logos. The thought which Heraclitus utters in the passage stand- ing at the beginning of his book (frag. 2, Hippolytus, Ref . haer. ix. 9 ; cp. Aristotle, Rhet. iii. 5, p. 1407, b. 14) is no other than that which since the Renaissance has ^ Compare Plutarch. Pyth. orac. 21, p. 404 ; =: frag. 11 ; Clement of Alex'. Strom, v. 13, p. 699 ; = frag. 116. The numbers refer not to Schuster's numbering of the fragments, but to that of the present work, which is the numeration oi Bywater, HISTORICAL AND CRITICAL. 13 inspired natural science and its accompanying specu- lation, namely, that truth is to be won by observation of the visible world. But the people, he complains, despise the revelation which Nature offers us with audible voice. Why, asks Heraclitus (Hippolytus, Ref . haer. ix. 9 ; cp. frag. 47), should an invisible harmony, be better than a visible ? It is not better, but, on the contrary, whatever is the object of seeing, hearing, or investigation, that I particularly honor (idem ix. 10 ; cp. frag. 13). Men, therefore, must trust their eyes (Polybius, xii. 27 ; cp. frag. 15) and not make reckless guesses concerning the weightiest things (Diog. Laert. ix. 73 ; cp. frag. 48). That Heraclitus' theory of knowl- edge, therefore, based it upon sense perception and reflection thereupon, is shown, continues Schuster, not only by the above passages, but also by the fact that the exaggerated form of the theory held by Protagoras (cp. Plato's Theaetetus) must necessarily have had its source in Heraclitus, his master. None the less is this shown also by Parmenides' attack on the empirical theory of knowledge (Sextus Empir. vii. 3), which could have been aimed only at the philoso- pher of Ephesus (Schuster, pp. 7 and 13-42). Turning now from the theory of knowledge to its results, the first law which the observation of Nature teaches us is the law of eternal and recurrent mo- tion {TrduTa xo)pet xal oudeu fihu^ Plato, Crat. p. 402 A). The starting point and central position of our philoso- pher we must find in this recurrent motion, rather fhan in the primitive fire which itself held a subordi- nate place in the system. But the Heraclitic motion was not conceived as any absolute molecular change in the modern sense, nor yet as that absolute insta- bility which appeared in the nihilism of the later 14 HERACLITUS. Heracliteans. It was rather conceived in a simpler way, as a general law that everything comes to an end and there is nothing permanent. Under this was included : 1) spacial motion, as of the flowing river ; 2) qualitative change, as in the human body; 3) a kind of periodicity which brings everything under its dominion. The last was the most emphasized. Birth and death are im.iversal; nothing escapes this fate. There is no fixed or unmoved being above or outside the shifting world, no divine heavenly existence that does not change, but all is involved in the same perpetual ebb and flow, rise and fall, life and death (Schuster, p. 81 flf.). But this life and death of the universe is literal, not figurative. The world itself is a great living organism subject to the same alternation of elemental fire, air, and water. This thoroughgoing hylozoism which Schuster attributes to Heraclitus, he bases principally on the writing de diaeta of Pseudo-Hippocrates, who, he believes, made a free use of the work of Heraclitus, if he did not directly plagiarize from him. Comparing this writing (particularly the passage, c. 10, p. 638) with Plato's Timaeus (p. 40 A, also drawn from Hera- clitus), he ventures to reconstruct the original as follows : " Everything passes away and nothing per- sists. So it is with the river, and so with mortal beings ; in whom continually fire dies in the birth of air, and air in the birth of water. So also with the divine heavenly existence, which is subject to the same process, for we are in reality only an imitatioh of that and of the whole world; as it happens with that so it must happen with us, and inversely we may judge of that by ourselves " (Schuster, p. 118). The life principle of the universe, as of the human HISTORICAL AND CRITICAL. 15 organism, is fire. This fire is everywhere present, so that "everything is full of gods and souls'' (Diog. Laert. ix. 7). The life of the body is sustained by the breath which inhales the dry vapors kindred to fire. At night, when the sun is extinguished and the world becomes unconscious, we inhale the dark wet vapors and sink into death-like sleep (Schuster, p. 135). The sun, which is new every day, changes at night into the surrounding air and then into the water of the sea. The sea produces the daily sun, as it is the source of all earthly phenomena. On a large scale this three- fold change takes place with the universe, which will ultimately be consumed in fire, again to become sea and cosmos. This is " the way up and down " — not a circular movement of the elements within the cosmos (Zeller), but the periodicity of the world itself. The way up and the way down relate only to the cosmogony. The latter is the creation of the world by condensation of fire into water, then earth ; the former is the reverse process of vaporization (Id. p. 169). This law or order is not dependent upon any divine purposeful will, but all is ruled by an inherent neces- sary ** fate." The elemental fire carries within itself the tendency toward change, and thus pursuing the way down, it enters the " strife " and war of opposites which condition the birth of the world (dcaxoaiiTjacf), and experience that hunger {y^pT^aixoaoi/TJ) which arises in a state where life is dependent upon nourishment, and where satiety (x6po(:) is only again found when, in pursuit of the way up, opposites are annulled, and " unity " and " peace " again emerge in the pure original fire {imijp(oac(;). This impulse of Nature towards change is conceived now as "destiny," " force," " necessity," " justice," or, when exhibited 16 HERACLITUS. in definite forms of time and matter, as *' intelligence '* (Id. p. 182, 194 ff.). - The Heraclitic harmony of opposites, as of the bow and the lyre, is a purely physical harmony. It is simply the operation of the strife of opposite forces, by which motion within an organism, at the point where if further continued it would endanger the whole, is balanced and caused to return within the limits of a determined amplitude (Id. p. 230 flf.). The identity of opposites means only that very dif- ferent properties may unite in the same physical thing, either by simultaneous comparison with different things or successive comparison with a changeable thing (Id. pp. 236, 243). The second or political section of Heraclitus' work treated of arts, ethics, society, and politics. It aimed to show how human arts are imitations of Nature, and how organized life, as in the universe and the indi- vidual, so in the state, is the secret of unity in variety. The central thought was the analogy existing between man and the universe, between the microcosm and the macrocosm, from which it results that the true ethical principle lies in imitation of Nature, and that law is founded on early customs which sprang from Nature (Id. p. 310 flf.). The third or theological section was mainly devoted to showing that the names of things are designations of their essence. That Heraclitus himself, not merely his followers, held the (pua^c dpd6T7j<; dvofidxcovy and used etymologies as proofs of the nature of things, Schuster believes is both consistent with his philosophy and conclusively proved by Plato's Cratylus. Primitive men named things from the language which Nature spoke to them ; names, therefore, give us the truth of HISTORICAL AND CRITICAL. 17 things. Etymologies of the names of the gods was the proof first brought forward, as in Plato's Cratylus; hence the name of this section of the work. To show this connection* of names and things was to prove the intimate connection of man with Nature, and so to lead to the conclusion that all knowledge is based on experience, which, indeed, was the end he had in view (Id. p. 317 flf.). (^It is not our purpose to criticize in detail Schuster's conception of Heraclitus. Much of it will commend itself to the careful student of the remains, particu- larly that which relates to the Heraclitic flux and its relation to the primitive fire. Suggestive, also, if not unimpeachable, is his conception of the relation of the microcosm to the macrocosm, and of the harmony and identity of opposites. In his exposition of these doctrines, Schuster has rendered valuable service. We can by no means, however, allow thus tentatively to pass, Schuster's conception of Heraclitus as a purely empirical philosopher. Before noticing this, a word needs to be said in regard to Schuster's method as a whole. As to the latter, the very extent of the task proposed made over-systemization inevitable. In criticism of Schuster's attempt, Zeller has well said that with the extant material of Heraclitus' book, the recovery of its plan is impossible (Vol. 1, p. 570, note). Such a plan of reconstruction as that which Schuster undertakes, demands the power not only to penetrate the sense of every fragment, but also so to read the mind of the author as to be able to restore that of the large absent portions. The small number and enigmatical character of the fragments which are extant, together with the contradictory character of ancient testimony to Heraclitus, makes such a task extremely hazardous. 18 HERACLITUS. It can be carried through only by the help of "unlun- ited conjecture." Such conjecture Schuster has used extensively. The necessity of carrying through his plan has led him to find in some passages more mean- ing than they will justly bear, while his apparently preconceived notion as to the wholly empirical charac- ter of the system has led him to distort the meaning of many sentences. We shall see examples of this presently. Incidentally, his method may be illustrated by his connection and use of the two passages: d.'uO pcbnoD^: /lii^ec AnoOavovTa^^ daaa oux SXnovTac obdh doxiouac (Clement of Alex. Strom, iv, 22, p. 630 ; cp. frag. 122), and al (po'^al dajnQjvrae xaO^ ^drjv (Plutarch, de Fac. in orbe lun. 28, p. 943 ; cp. frag. 38). Schuster conjectures that these passages came together in the original work, and he renders and interprets them as follows : " There awaits men in death what they neither hope nor believe," namely, rest and the joy of a sleep-like con- dition (!), so that even instinctively '' souls scent out death," desiring to obtain it (Schuster, p. 190). Not to speak of the forced translation of the latter fragment, only the most vivid imagination would think of using these passages in this way, especially as Clement himself, in his use of the first passage, refers it to the punishments which happen to men after death (see below, frags. 122 and 124, sources), and Plutarch, in respect to the second, uses it as proof that souls in Hades are nourished by vapors (see below, frag. 38, sources). But Schuster's conception of Heraclitus did not admit of belief in a distinct life after death, and it was necessary to make these passages fit in with the plan. The attempt to weave the fragments into a con- nected whole, and their division into the three Logoi, may be regarded on the whole as a decided failure. HISTORICAL JLND CRITICAL. 19 Schuster fipds only thirteen fragments for the con- cluding theological section, although our knowledge of Heraclitus and his times would rather indicate, as indeed Teichmiiller thinks probable, that the theo- logical section was the principal portion of the book. Turning now to the theory of knowledge, according to Schuster, as we have seen, Heraclitus is an empiri- cist and sensationalist and knows no world but the visible. With this conclusion we cannot agree. Schus- ter's argument that this doctrine must have arisen with Heraclitus since it was held by Protagoras, his disciple, has little weight. The order of development was rather that pointed out by Plato himself in the Theaetetus (p. 151 ff.), namely, that the sensational theory of knowledge was the outcome of the Protagorean doc- trine that man is the measure of all things, and that this in turn grew out of the Heraclitic flux. No doubt the sensational theory was implied by the Sophists, but it was incipient with them and not yet formulated. Much less can it be attributed to Heraclitus, whose contribution to the theory began and ended with the eternal flux. A sensational theory of knowledge, it is quite true, was likely to be an outcome of the Ephe- sian's philosophy, but he did not himself proceed thus far. The question, theoretically considered, was be- yond his time. There are passages which indicate that he held, inconsistently it may be, quite the oppo- site doctrine. ** Eyes and ears," he says, "are bad witnesses to men having rude souls" (Sextus Emp. adv. Math. vii. 126 ;=frag. 4 ; cp. frags. 3, 5, 6, 19, etc., and below (p. 50). The passage which offers Schuster the strongest support for his sensationalism is that noted above (p. 13) from Hippolytus, " Whatever con- cerns seeing, hearing and learning (jiddTjac^, Schuster 20 HERACLITUS. translates " Erforschung "), I particularly honor '* (frag. 13). Adopting the simplest and most natural meaning of this passage, it has no bearing on any theory of knowledge, but means merely, as Pfleiderer points out (Heraklit, p. 64, note), that Heraclitus prefers the pleasures of the higher senses, as of seeing, hearing, and the knowledge acquired thereby, to the sensual pleasures of the lower senses which the masses pursue. If, however, Schuster will take it in a theoretical sense, then it comes into conflict with the other passage, ** The hidden harmony is better than the visible." The contradiction is foreseen by Schuster, who deliberately changes the latter into a question (see above, p. 13), without a shadow of right, as may be seen by reference to the context in Hippolytus (see below, frag. 47), who expressly states that the two passages seem to conflict. Further support for his interpretation Schuster seeks in the following passage from Hippolytus : Toi) dk XoyoD Toud' ioi^To^ ahl d^uueToc yiuouTac dii>0pco7roc xal 7tp6(T0£i> 7] dxouaac xal dxouaauTe^ to TtpcoToi^. yo^ofxivayv yap ndi^Tcou xara rbv koyou t6v8s dTtecpocac ioixaac nzcpcofxevoe xal inecou xal ipymv zotooricDV bxoicjv iyo) dajYZUfiae^ dcaepecjv sxaiTTOu xazd (puacv xal fpd^mi^ oxa}(; ij^ee (Ref . haer. ix. 9 ; = frag. 2). - This is the passage of which Schuster says that if Heraclitus had written nothing mor6 it would have given him a place of honor in philosophy, for here for the first time appeared the thought that has inspired speculation and modern science since the Renaissance, that truth is to be sought in the observation of Nature. But we are unable to find here any such meaning. The sense of the passage depends upon the sense of Logos. Of course, if Schuster is free to translate this word in any way he chooses, he can get from the pas- HISTORICAL AND CRITICAL. 21 sage almost any meaning. He chooses to render it the Voice of Nature or the Speech of the visible world. In this he is not supported by any other critics. By ancient commentators of Heraclitus the Logos was understood as Reason, and in this general sense it is taken by modem commentators including Heinze, Zeller, Teichmiiller, and Pfleiderer, although more specifically they see that, in harmony with the whole Heraclitic philosophy, it is to be taken as Reason immanent in the world as Order or Law. Schuster objects that Logos could not mean Reason, since before the time of Heraclitus it had never been so used, and no author would venture to introduce at the very beginning of his work words with new meanings. But precisely the same objection applies to its meaning the Speech of Nature, for the whole point in Schuster's exposition is that this was an original idea with Heraclitus. If the Logos is conceived as Order, this objection is met, since this meaning is given in the derivation of the word. Moreover, if Schuster could show that the word meant ^' speech " or ** discourse," then the discourse referred to must have been not that of Nature but of the author himself. Finally, if we adopt Reason as the meaning of Logos here, the whole passage, so far from supporting, directly refutes Schuster's sensational theory of knowledge. Another argument for the empiricism of Heraclitus, Schuster seeks in his denunciation of the people for their failure to interest themselves in acquiring knowledge by empirical investigation of the things that surround them, which he bases on a couple of passages from Clement and M. Aurelius (see above, p. 12). Heraclitus, in fact, said nothing of the kind; but Schuster, by conjectural reconstruction of the text and an arbitrary 22 HERACLITUS, translation, extracts a theoretical meaning from simple sentences which no one who had not a preconceived theory to support would ever imagine to mean more than a reproach upon the masses for their superficiality and neglect of interest in a deeper knowledge of the world (see Schuster, p. 17, and cp. frags. 5, 93). What Heraclitus' theory of knowledge really was we shall see more fully in the examination of Pfleiderer's posi- tion later. Here it is sufficient to add that, whatever empirical tendency his philosophy may have had, any such positive doctrine as that which Schuster ascribes to him was far beyond the time of Heraclitus. Schuster's interpretation of the Heraclitic '/^pyjafioaovr] and x6po<; is also open to criticism. Zeller, indeed, has given a similar explanation of these words (Vol. 1, p. 641), but Pfleiderer has understood them differently (p. 176)^ From Heraclitus himself there remains only the two above words (frag. 24). Hippolytus (Ref . haer. ix. 10, cp. frag. 24, sources) says that the arrangement of the world {dcaxoafxr^ac^)^ Heraclitus called " crav- ing" {xPWt^^^^^''i)y and the conflagration of the world (ixKupcoae^) he called ** satiety '* {xopo^). Schuster, therefore, understanding by deax6a[x7jac(:^ not the process of world-building, that is, the passing of the homoge- neous original fire into the manifold of divided exist- ence, but the completed manifold world itself or the x6(Tfxo^, interprets the ** craving " or hunger as belong- ing to the present differentiated world, which hungers, as it were, to get back into the state of original fire or satiety. The testimony is too meagre to say that this is not a possible interpretation, but it seems to be wrong. For Schuster admits, as of course he must, that the original fire carries within itself an impulse to change and develop into a manifold world. But HISTORICAL AND CRITICAL. 23 this impulse to change is hardly consistent with a state of perfect " satiety." If now we take ScaxoafxTjaec: in its primary signification denoting the action or pro- cess of arranging, then craving becomes the designa- tion of the world-building process itself. Craving then is nothing but the original impulse to evolve itself, contained in the primitive fire, while the reverse pro- cess, the conflagration, is satiety, or better, the result of satiety. Teichmuller. The work of Teichmtiller (see above, p. 1) does not profess to be a complete exposition of the philosophy of Heraclitus, but to indicate rather the direction in which the interpretation is to be found. Teichmtiller believes that the philosophy of the ancients is to be interpreted by their theories of Nature. Physics came before metaphysics. Particularly does this apply to Heraclitus of Ephesus. His philosophy of Nature, therefore, is the key with which Teichmtiller will unlock the secrets of his system (Teichmtiller, I, p. 3). But yet Heraclitus was not a naturalist. Of the sun, moon, eclipses, seasons, or earth, he has little to say. In the astronomy of Anaximander or the mathe- matics of Pythagoras he took little interest. On such polymathy he cast a slur (Diog. Laert. ix. 1; cp. frag. 16). He went back to Thales and started from his childlike conception of Nature. To Heraclitus the earth was flat, extending with its land and sea indefinitely in each direction. The sun, therefore, describes only a semicircle, kindled every morning from the sea and extinguished in it every evening. Moreover, the sun is no larger than it looks (Diog. Laert. ix. 7). The sun, therefore, cannot pass his boundaries (of the half- circle), else the Erinyes (who inhabit the lower world) 24 HERACLITUS. will find him out (Plutarch, deExil. ii. p. 604 ; = frag. 29). Up and down are not relative but absolute directions (Teichmiiller, I, p. 14). Thus upon physical grounds we may interpret at once some of the aphorisms. For instance, since the sun is a daily exhalation from the earth, sun and earth must have in part a common substance ; hence Diony- sus and Hades are the same (Clement of Alex. Protrept. ii. p. 30 ; cp. frag. 127), since the former stands for the sun and the latter for the lower world. Likewise day and night are the same (Hippoly tus, Ref . haer. ix. 10 ; cp. frag. 35), since they are essentially of the same elements, the difference being only one of degree, the former having a preponderance of the light and dry, the latter of the dark and moist (Teichmiiller, I, pp. "2^6). The four elements, fire, air, earth, and water, are not, as with Empedocles, unchangeable elements, but in ceaseless qualitative change are continually passing into one another. Experience itself teaches this in the daily observation of such phenomena as the drying up of swamps, the melting of solids, and the evapo- ration of liquids (Id. I, p. 58). Fire is not a symbol, but is real fire that bums and crackles. It is the ground principle, the entelechy of the world, in which reside life, soul, reason. It is God himself. It is absolute purity. It rules in the pure upper air, the realm of the sun. Its antithesis is moisture, absolute impurity, which rules in the lower regions of the earth. The sun with his clear light moves in the upper fiery air. The moon with her dimmed light moves in the lower moister air. The central thought, therefore, is purification, or **the way up,'' from the moist and earthy to the dry and fiery (Id. I, p. 62 ff.). HISTORICAL AND CRITICAL. 25 / The psychology of Heraclitus is not analogous, but I identical with his physics. The soul is the pure, light, fiery, incorporeal principle which burns like the sun. Its degree of life and Intelligence depends upon its purity from moisture. The stupid drunken man has a moist soul (Stobaeus Floril. v. 120 ; cp. frag. 73). ^' The dry soul is the wisest and best " (frag. 74). In sleep the fire principle bums low ; in death it is extinguished, when the soul, like the sun at night, sinks into the dark regions of Hades. Hence it follows that there was with Heraclitus no doctrine of the immortality of the soul (Teichmiiller, I, p. 74 fif.). Ethics, therefore, is purification, and in this thought we see the origin of that general idea which as ** Catharsis" became prominent in Plato and later philosophy. Teichmiiller finds it of the greatest interest to have traced the history of this idea, with its related one of ** separation " or " apartness," back to Heraclitus. '*0f all whose words I have heard," says the latter, " no one has attained to this — to know that Wisdom is apart {xexcDpeafiiuou) from all " (Sto- baeus Floril. iii. 81 ; = frag. 18). This " separateness " of Wisdom, which was only another term for reason, God or pure* fire, reveals the origin of the distinction of the immaterial from the material. With Hera- clitus, to be sure, the idea of immateriality in its later sense was not present, but fire as the most incorporeal being of which he knew, identical with reason and intelligence, was set over against the crude material world. We have therefore here neither spiritualism nor crude materialism, but the beginning of the dis- tinction between the two. With Anaxagoras another step was taken when fire was dropped and the Nous was conceived in pure separateness apart even from 26 HERACLITUS. fire. Following Anaxagoras, Plato regarded the Ideas as distinct and separate {si)jxpci^i^j xej^wpcafiivou). In Aristotle it appears as the separation {j[copeefore 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. In tracing the history of ideas, much emphasis has been laid by Teichmiiller, as we have seen, upon the idea of purification {xdOapac(:) as it appears in Hera- clitus, and in connection therewith he has found the beginning of the idea of the " apartness " or " separa- tion " of the inunaterial world, an idea so enormously enlarged by Anaxagoras and Plato. As regards the Catharsis proper, Teichmiiller has rendered a service by pointing out Heraclitus' connection with the idea ; but in reading Teichmiiller's book, one would be easily led to believe that the Catharsis idea is much more prominent in Heraclitus than it really is, and as regards the doctrine of " separation," it seems at once so incongruous with the system as a whole that we must inquire what foundation, if any, there is for it. The student of Heraclitus knows, although the reader of Teichmiiller might not suspect, that the words xddapffe^j xadap6(;, tihxpcvi(:^ eckxpii^eea, y^copcazov^ y^coptadii^j ixksxToiy themselves do not occur in the authentic remains of his writings. One exception is to be noted. The word xey^copcaiihov occurs in the passage from Stobaeus already noticed (see above, p. 25). It is as follows : ^'Oxoacov X6'fou(; fjxouaa oudsci; dipexi^itzat ic roDro, ctJore yci^waxscu ore (T0ou (Stobaeus Floril. iii. 81). This passage TeichmuUer uses as his text in establishing the connection of Heraclitus with the doctrine of '' separation," unfortimately, however, first because he has not found the correct interpreta- tion of it, and second, because, if he had, it would stand in direct contradiction to the doctrine of imma- nence which he spends all the next chapter in estab- HISTORICAL AND CRITICAL. 37 lishing for Heraclitus. Io • 7ji> di as fjLU£pou lapLupbrep^ 'fje?Jou. — ix. 16. With the religion of the Mysteries, in its older and purer form, Heraclitus was in full sympathy. By his HISTORICAL AND CRITICAL. 41 family he was brought into close connection with it. Ephesus, too, his city, was a religious centre. Dio- genes (ix. 6) relates that he deposited his book in the temple of Artemis. Heraclitus, indeed, was not a friend of the popular religion, but that was because of its abuses, and it was in particular the popular Olym- pian religion that he attacked. The connection of the Ephesian with the Mysteries may be considered as a deep-seated influence which their underlying princi- ples exerted upon him. These religious principles he turned into metaphysics. His system as a whole was religious and metaphysical (Pfleiderer, p. 32 f.). With this introduction, Pfleiderer proceeds as fol- lows. Heraclitus' starting point lay positively in his theory of knowledge, which was a doctrine of specu- lative intuition and self -absorption. In this sense our author understands the fragment from Plutarch (adv. Colot. 20, p. 1118 ; = frag. 80), ' Edc^Tjadfjoju ifxtwoTov, " I searched within myself," that is, I wrapped myself in thought, and so in this self -absorption I sought the kernel of all truth. Hence his contempt for the masses who act and speak without insight. But does not this conflict with those Heraclitic sentences which place the standard of truth and action in the common or universal {^oi^ou) ? (cp. frags. 92, 91). Do these not lead as Schuster holds, to the rule, Verum est, quod semper, quod ubique, quod ab omnibus creditum est? No, says Pfleiderer, the common here does not mean the general opinion of the majority. All such interpret- ations are sufiiciently refuted by that other passage, ^' To me, one is ten thousand if he be the best " (frag. 113). What Heraclitus really meant by the common (f ?>i^6i^) was "the true inward universality." Absorp- tion into one's inner self was absorption into that 42 HERACLITUS. ground of reason which is identical with the divine principle of the world. By this universal reason under which he contemplated all things, Heraclitus meant nothing different from what by Spinoza was expressed by "sub specie aetemitatis/' and in subsequent phi- losophy by "intellectual intuition" and "the stand- point of universal knowledge.'^ Heraclitus fell back upon that universal instinct which in the form of human language is exhibited as the deposit of succes- sive ages, and which again he did not distinguish from the voice of the Sibyl, representative of divine revelation. As respects the source of knowledge, Heraclitus as little as Spinoza, Fichte and Hegel, looked to himself as individual, but rather to that singular and qualitative, divine source in which the individual participates (Pfleiderer, p. 46 flf.). The senses, though they do not give us the whole truth, yet furnish the sufficient data that are to be interpreted by the light of reason. The errors of the masses do not arise from trusting the senses, for the latter give not a false, but a partial account. Their error lies in missing the spiritual band which unites the manifold of sense into the higher unity, an error distinctive of the popular polytheism as against the religion of the Mysteries (Id. p. 70). The theory of knowledge, Heraclitus' starting point, being thus disposed of, Pfleiderer proceeds to discuss the material principles of his philosophy in their abstract metaphysical form. The keynote here is the indestructibility of life. The oscillating identity of life and death, a truth adopted from the Mysteries, is taken up by Heraclitus and elevated into a universal and metaphysical principle. It is based on the simple observation of Nature, which sees the life and light HISTORICAL AND CRITICAL, 43 I I warmth of summer pasBing into the death and darkneBS and cold of winter, only to be revived and restored in the never-failing spring. So on a smaller scale, day passes into night, but night ever again into day, So everywhere in Nature nothing passes away but to revive again. From this follows the hope of the universality of this law, the indestructibility of human life, and the resolution of the opposition be- tween the light, warm life here above and the dark, cold death below. This is the hopeful element which characterizes the philosophy of the Ephesian. Over against it was the hopeless creed of the masses, whose complaint over the inexorable destiny of death found expression from the earliest times in the despairing lines of the poets. The conunon view does not see too much continuance and constancy in reality, but too little. " What we see waking," says Heraclitus, "is death, what we see sleeping is a dream " (Clement of Alex, iii, 3, p. 520 ; =frag, Gi). Which means, that like the unreality and inconstancy of dreams is this ephem- eral and perishing existence which we, the vulgar people, see when awake. Reversing this gloomy view, the Mysteries taught that Hades and Dionysus were the same (cp. frag. 127), That is, the god of death feared in the world below, is identical with the god of life and joy of the world here above, which is to say that the regenerative power of life persists even in death and shall overcome it (Pfteiderer, p. 74 fF.}, From this theory of the indestructibility of the fire force of life, Heraclitus passes to the ancillary truth of the unity of opposition in general. Hence he asserted the identity of day and night, winter and summer, yoiing and old, sleeping and waking, hunger and satiety (cp. frags. 36, 78), His whole theory of the 44 HERACUTUS. harmony of opposites was, as it were, apologetic. life rules in death, why does death exist 'i It was in answer to this question that Heraclitus developed his science of opposition and strife, by showing the pres- ence here of a general law {Pfleiderer, p. 84 ff.). In the same spirit Pfleiderer interprets the much ^ contested figure of the harmony of the world as the j harmony of the bow and the lyre (see frags. 45, 56). Without rejecting the interpretation suggested by I Bemays (Rhein. Mus. vii. p. 94) and followed by most other critics, which refers the figure to the form of ' the bow and of the lyre, their opposite stretching arms producing harmony by tension, Pfleiderer finds in the comparison still another meaning. The bow and the lyre are both attributes of Apollo, the slayer and the giver of life and joy. Thus the harmony between the bow and the lyre, as attributes of one god — symbols respectively of death and of life and joy — expresses the | great thought of the harmony and reciprocal inter- change of death and life (Pfleiderer, p. 89 ff.). The Heraclitic flux of all things, says Pfleiderer, was 1 not antecedent to his abstract teachings, but the logi- j cal consequence thereof. The identity of life and 1 death led him to the identity of all opposites. But opposites are endlessly flowing or passing into each other. Hence from the principle that everything is opposition, follows the principle that everything flows. The universal flux is only a picture to make his relig- ious metaphysical sentences intelligible (Id, p. 100 ff.). The Heraclitic fire is real fire as opposed to the logical symbol of Lassalle, but not the strictly sensible fire that burns and crackles, as Teichmiiller supposes. It is rather a less definite conception, which is taken now as fire, now as warmth, warm air or vapor. It is HISTORICAL AND CRITICAL. 45 the concrete form or intuitional correlate of the meta- physical notion of life (Id. p. 120 flf.)- " The way up and down " refers not only to the trans- mutations of fire, water, and earth, but holds good in general for the oscillation of opposites, and particularly for the polarity of life and death (Id. p. 140). As one result of his investigation, Pfleiderer affirms a strong optimistic element in the philosophy of the Ephesian. He contests the opinion of Schuster and Zeller that the endless destruction of single existences is kindred to the pessimistic doctrine of Anaximander, of the extinction of all individuals as an atohement for the ** injustice " of individual existence. The pro- cess indeed goes on, but it has a bright side, and it is this that Heraclitus sees. Life, to be sure, is ever pass- ing into death, but out of death life ever emerges. It is this thought, the powerlessness of death over the indestructible fire force of life, which Heraclitus em- phasizes (Id. p. 180 flf.). Still more decided is his rational optimism, his un- swerving belief in a world well ordered and disposed. A deep rationality characterizes the universe (cp. frags. 2, 1, 91, 92, 98, 99, 96, 19). To express this idea, Hera- clitus used the word Logos, which after his time played so prominent a part in the older philosophy. This word, passing even beyond its signification of " well ordered relation," conveyed finally with Heraclitus, as ^oT-oc f yvoc, rather the idea of Reason immanent in the world (Pfieiderer, p. 231 flf.). In the invisible harmony we find the same general thought. As distinguished from the visible harmony, which meant that external order of Nature insuring to the trustful peasant the never failing return of summer and winter, heat and frost, day and night,— the invisi- 46 . HBRACLITUS. ble harmony was that all-embracing harmony which is revealed to thought as the rational union of all oppositions. Against this theodicy there is no valid objection to be derived from the accounts which repre- sent the Ephesian philosopher as sad and complain- ing, nor from the passages descriptive of the evils of life and the weakness of men (cp. frags. 86, 55, 112, etc.). In all cases these refer not to the philosopher's own opinions, but to the errors of the ignorant masses (Pfleiderer, p. 235 f£.). The future existence of the soul, though not consis- tent with his physics and metaphysics, was neverthe- less held from the religious and ethical standpoint. In fact it was involved, as has been shown, in Heraclitus' point of departure, so that we have less reason to com- plain of inconsistency in his case than we have, in reference to the same matter, in the case of the Stoics later (Id. p. 210). We have given, perhaps, more space to the exposi- tion of Pfleiderer's work than it relatively deserves, because it is the last word that has been spoken on Heraclitus, because, also, it has deservedly brought into prominence the optimism and the religious char- acter of his philosophy, and because finally it presents another instructive example of over-systemization. It claims our attention, too, because the view it proposes is a complete reversal of the prevalent conception of Heraclitus, and if seriously taken, chknges the whole tenor of his philosophy. In what follows we shall examine chiefly the two main points in Pfleiderer's work, namely, the theory of knowledge and the connection with the Greek Mysteries ; the latter, because it is Pfleiderer's particu- HISTORICAL. ANB CRITICAL. 47 lar contribution, and the former, because it will open to us an important aspect of the Ephesian's philosophy. In the first place, however, it can by no means be admitted that the doctrine of the flux and the harmony of opposites represent the negative side of his system, and are secondary to his theory of knowledge and his religious dogmas. The unanimous testimony of the ancients cannot be thus easily set aside. That of Plato and Aristotle alone is decisive. Pfleiderer objects that Plato's purpose, which was to establish the changelessness of noumena against the change of phenomena, led him to emphasize the flux of Hera- clitus. But if Heraclitus' positive teachings were, as Pfleiderer says, first of all the theory of knowledge, this and not the flux must have been emphasized in the Theaetetus where the theory of knowledge was Plato's theme. It is sufficient, however, here to note that what Heraclitus has stood for in philosophy from his own time to the present, is the doctrine of absolute change, and this doctrine may, therefore, properly be called the positive side of his philosophy. If what Pfleiderer means is that the theory of knowledge and not the flux was his starting point, he would have a shadow more of right. It is, however, misleading to say that his theory of knowledge was his starting point, for, as we have indicated in our examination of Schuster's work, Heraclitus was not concerned with a theory of knowledge as such. To state in a word what his point of departure really was, regarded from a common-sense view, it was his conviction that he was in possession of new truth which the blindness and ignorance of men prevented them from seeing (the point of departure indeed of almost every one who writes a book), and the three leading ideas in this Lr>