Fragments of Thought of Herakleitos

Herakleitos

1. It is wise to hearken not to me but my argument, and to confess that all things are one. R.P. 32.

2. Though this discourse is true evermore, yet men are as unable to understand it when they hear it for the first time as before they have heard it at all. For, although all things happen in accordance with the account I give, men seem as if they had no experience of them, when they make trial of words and works such as I set forth, dividing each thing according to its nature and explaining how it truly is. But other men know not what they are doing when you wake them up, just as they forget what they do when asleep. R. P. 25.

3. Fools when they do hear are like the deaf; of them does the proverb bear witness that they are absent when present. R.P. 24a.

4. Eyes and ears are bad witnesses to men, if they have souls that understand not their language. R.P. 34.

5. The many have not as many thoughts as the things they meet with; nor, if they do remark them, do they understand them, though they believe they do.

6. Knowing not how to listen nor how to speak.

7. If you do not expect the unexpected, you will not find it; for it is hard to be sought out and difficult.

8. Those who seek for gold dig up much earth and find a little. R. P. 36b.

9.[Text missing in source document.]

10. Nature loves to hide. R.P. 27f.

11. The lord whose is the oracle at Delphoi neither utters nor hides his meaning, but shows it by a sign. R.P. 23a.

12. And the Sibyl, with raving lips uttering things solemn, unadorned, and unembellished, reaches over a thousand years with her voice because of the god in her. R.P. 23a.

13. Am I to prize these things above what can be seen, heard, and learned? R. P. 34.

14. … bringing untrustworthy witnesses in support of disputed points.

15. The eyes are more exact witnesses than the ears. R. P. 34b.

16. The learning of many things teacheth not understanding, else would it have taught Hesiod and Pythagoras, and again Xenophanes and Hekataios. R.P. 24.

17. Pythagoras, son of Mnesarchos, practised inquiry beyond all other men, and made himself a wisdom of his own, which was but a knowledge of many things and an art of mischief. R.P. 24a.

18. Of all whose discourses I have heard, there is not one who attains to understanding that wisdom is apart from other things.

19. Wisdom is one thing. It is to know the thought by which all things are steered through all things. R.P. 32.

20. This order, which is the same in all things, no one of gods or men has made; but it was ever, is now, and ever shall be an ever-living Fire, fixed measures of it kindling and fixed measures going out. R.P. 28.

21. The transformations of Fire are, first of all, sea (and half of the sea is earth, half fiery storm-cloud). . . . R. P. 28b.

22. All things are exchanged for Fire, and Fire for all things, as wares are exchanged for gold and gold for wares. R. P. 28.

23. (The earth) is liquefied, and the sea is measured by the same tale as before it became earth. R.P. 31.

24. Fire is want and satiety. R.P. 29a.

25. Fire lives the death of earth, and air lives the death of fire; water lives the death of air, earth that of water. R.P. 30 A.

26. Fire will come upon and lay hold of all things. R. P. 29a.

27. How can one hide from that which never sinks to rest?

28. It is the thunderbolt that steers the course of all things. R. P. 28b.

29. The sun will not exceed his measures; if he does, the Erinyes, the avenging handmaids of Justice, will find him out. R.P. 31.

30. The limit of East and West is the Bear; and opposite the Bear is the boundary of bright Zeus.

31. If there were no sun, it would be night.

32. The sun is new every day.

33. [Text missing in source document.]

34. The seasons that bring all things.

35. Hesiod is most men’s teacher. Men think he knew very many things, a man who did not know day or night! They are one. R. P. 31b.

36. God is day and night, winter and summer, war and peace, satiety and hunger; but he takes various shapes, just as fire, when it is mingled with different incenses, is named according to the savour of each. R. P. 31b.

37. If all things were turned to smoke, the nostrils would distinguish them.

38. Souls smell in Hades. R. P. 38d.

39. It is cold things that become warm, and what is warm that cools; what is wet dries, and the parched is moistened.

40. It scatters things and brings them together; it approaches and departs.

41, 42. You cannot step twice into the same rivers; for fresh waters are ever flowing in upon you. R. P. 26a.

43. Homer was wrong in saying: "Would that strife might perish from among gods and men!" He did not see that he was praying for the destruction of the universe; for, if his prayer were heard, all things would pass away. R.P. 27d.

44. War is the father of all and the king of all; and some he has made gods and some men, some bond and some free. R.P. 27.

45. Men do not know how that which is drawn in different directions harmonises with itself. The harmonious structure of the world depends upon opposite tension, like that of the bow and the lyre. R.P. 27.

46. It is opposition that brings things together.

47. The hidden harmony is better than the open. R.P. 27.

48. Let us not conjecture at random about the greatest things.

49. Men who love wisdom must be acquainted with very many things indeed.

50. The straight and the crooked path of the fuller’s comb is one and the same.

51. Asses would rather have straw than gold. R.P. 24a.

51a. Oxen are happy when they find bitter vetches to eat. R.P. 40b.

52. The sea is the purest and the impurest water. Fish can drink it, and it is good for them; to men it is undrinkable and destructive. R.P. 39c.

53, 54. Swine like to wash in the mire rather than in clean water and barnyard fowls in dust.

55. Every beast is tended with blows.

56. Same as 45.

57. Good and ill are the same. R.P. 39c.

58. Physicians who cut, burn, stab, and rack the sick, then complain that they do not get any adequate recompense for it. R.P. 39c.

59. You must couple together things whole and things not whole, what is drawn together and what is drawn asunder, the harmonious and the discordant. The one is made up of all things, and all things issue from the one.

60. Men would not have known the name of justice if there were no injustice.

61. Men themselves have made a law for themselves, not knowing what they made it about; but the gods have ordered the nature of all things. Now the arrangements which men have made are never constant, neither when they are right nor when they are wrong; but all the arrangements which the gods have made are always right, both when they are right and when they are wrong; so great is the difference. R.P. 37s.

62. We must know that war is the common and justice is strife, and that all things come into being and pass away (?) through strife.

63. … for they are undoubtedly allotted by destiny.

64. All the things we see when awake are death, even as the things we see in slumber are sleep. R.P. 34b.

65. Wisdom is one only. It is willing and unwilling to be called by the name of Zeus. R.P. 32.

66. The bow (bios’) is called life (bi’os), but its work is death, R. P. 40c, note 2.

67. Mortals are immortals and immortals are mortals, the one living the other’s death and dying the other’s life. R.P. 38.

68. For it is death to souls to become water, and death to water to become earth. But water comes from earth; and, from water, soul. R.P. 30B.

69. The way up and the way down is one and the same. R. P. 29 d. 70. The beginning and the end are common (to both paths).

71. You will not find the boundaries of soul by travelling in any direction. R.P. 33d.

72. It is pleasure to souls to become moist. R.P. 38b.

73. A man, when he gets drunk, is led by a beardless lad, knowing not where he steps, having his soul moist. R.P. 34.

74–76. The dry soul is the wisest and best. R.P. 34.

77. Man is kindled and put out like a light in the night-time.

78. The quick and the dead, the waking and the sleeping, the young and the old are the same; the former are changed and become the latter, and the latter in turn are changed into the former. R.P. 39.

79. Time is a child playing draughts, the kingly power is a child’s. R.P. 32a.

80. I have sought to know myself. R.P. 40.

81. We step and do not step into the same rivers; we are and are not. R.P. 26a.

82. It is a weariness to labour at the same things and to be always beginning afresh.

83. It finds rest in change.

84. Even the ingredients of a posset separate if it is not stirred.

85. Corpses are more fit to be cast out than dung.

86. When they are born, they wish to live and to meet with their dooms—or rather to rest, and they leave children behind them to meet with dooms in turn.

87–89. A man may be a grandfather in thirty years.

90. Those who are asleep are fellow-workers. . . .

91. Wisdom is common to all things. Those who speak with intelligence must hold fast to the common as a city holds fast to its law, and even more strongly. For all human laws are fed by one thing, the divine. It prevails as much as it will, and suffices for all things with something to spare. R.P. 35.

92. Though wisdom is common, yet the many live as if they had a wisdom of their own.  R. P. 36.

93. They are estranged from that with which they have most constant intercourse.

94. It is not meet to eat and speak like men asleep.

95. The waking have one and the same world, but the sleeping turn aside each into a world of his own.

96. The way of man has no wisdom, but that of the gods has. R. P. 37.

97. Man is called a baby by god, even as a child by a man. R. P. 37.

98, 99. The wisest man is an ape compared to god, just as the most beautiful ape is ugly compared to man.

100. The people must fight for its law as for its walls. R.P. 40.

101. Greater deaths win greater portions. R. P. 40d.

102. Gods and men honour those who are slain in battle. R. P. 40d.

103. Wantonness needs to be extinguished even more than a conflagration. R. P. 40d.

104. It is not good for men to get all they wish to get. It is disease that makes health pleasant and good; hunger, plenty; and weariness rest. R. P. 40b.

105–107. It is hard to fight with desire. Whatever it wishes to get, it purchases at the cost of soul. R. P. 40d.

108, 109. It is best to hide folly; but it is a hard task in times of relaxation, over our cups.

110. And it is the law, too, that we obey the counsel of one. R. P. 40d.

111. For what thought or wisdom have they? They follow the poets and take the crowd as their teacher, knowing not that there are many bad and few good. For even the best of them choose one thing above all others, immortal glory among mortals, while most of them fill their bellies like beasts. R.P. 24a.

112. In Priene lived Bias, son of Teutamas, who is of more account than the rest. (He said, "Most men are bad.")

113. One is as ten thousand to me, if he be the best. R.P. 24a.

114. The Ephesians would do well to hang themselves, every grown man of them, and leave the city to beardless youths; for they have cast out Hermodoros, the best man among them, saying: "We will have none who is best among us; if there be any such, let him be so elsewhere and among others." R.P. 22b.

115. Dogs bark at every one they do not know. R. P. 24a.

116. (The wise man) is not known because of men’s want of belief.

117. The fool is fluttered at every word. R.P. 36b.

118. The most esteemed of those in estimation knows how to feign; yet of a truth justice shall overtake the artificers of lies and the false witnesses.

119. Homer should be turned out of the lists and whipped and Archilochos likewise. R. P. 24.

120. One day is equal to another.

121. Man’s character is his fate.

122. There await men when they die such things as they look not for nor dream of. R. P. 38d.

123. . . . that they rise up and become the guardians of the hosts of the quick and dead. R.P. 38d.

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

125. The mysteries into which men are initiated are unholy. R. P. 40.

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. 40c.

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 in whose honour they go mad and keep the feast of the wine-vat. R.P. 40e.

128. [Text missing in source document.]

129, 130. They purify themselves by defiling themselves with blood, just as if one who had stepped into the mud were to go and wash his feet in mud.

His opinions on particular points are these:—

He held that Fire was the element, and that all things were produced in exchange for fire, and that they arise from condensation and rarefaction. But he explains nothing clearly. All things were due to opposition, and all things were in flux like a river. (Given in Diogenes Laertios.)

The all is infinite 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. (This is the Stoic interpretation.)

He called change the upward and the downward path, and held that the world goes on according to this. When fire is condensed it becomes moist, and when collected together it turns to water; water being congealed turns to earth (the conjecture of Theophrastos); 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. 29.

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 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 slight 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; increase of warmth proceeding from the bright exhalation produced summer, and the multiplication 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. 31b.

And in turn each (i.e. fire and water) prevails, and is prevailed over to the greatest and the least degree that is possible. For neither can prevail altogether for the following reasons. If fire advances to the utmost limit of the water, its nourishment fails it. It retires, then, to a place where it can get nourishment. And if water advances to the utmost limit of the fire, movement fails it. At that point, then, it stands still; and, when it stands still, it has no longer power to resist, but is at once consumed as nourishment for the fire that falls upon it. For these reasons neither can prevail altogether. But, if at any time either should in any way be overcome, then none of the things that exist would be as they are now. So long as things are as they are fire and water will always be too and neither will ever fail.—Ps. -Hipp. De Diaeta, i. 3.

Translations of John Burnet