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previous: Chapter 4 This webpage reproduces a chapter of A History of Philosophy by Frederick Copleston, S. J. as reprinted by Image Books — Doubleday New York • London • Toronto • Sydney • Auckland 1993 The text, and illustrations except as noted, are in the public domain. next: Chapter 6

Part I: Pre‑Socratic Philosophy

 p38  Chapter V
The Word of Heraclitus

Heraclitus was an Ephesian noble and flourished, according to Diogenes, about the 69th Olympiad, i.e. c. 504‑501 B.C.; his dates cannot be accurately determined. The office of Basileus was hereditary in his family, but Heraclitus relinquished it in favour of his brother. He was, we gather, a melancholy man, of aloof and solitary temperament, who expressed his contempt for the common herd of citizens, as also for the eminent men of the past. "The Ephesians," he said of the citizens of his own city, "would do well to hang themselves, every grown man of them, and leave the city to beardless lads; for they have cast out Hermodorus, 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."​1 Again he comments: "In Priene lived Bias, son of Teutamas, who is of more account than the rest." (He said: "Most men are bad.")2

Heraclitus expresses his opinion of Homer in the saying "Homer should be turned out of the lists and whipped, and Archilochus likewise." Similarly he observed: "The learning of many things does not teach understanding, otherwise it would have taught Hesiod and Pythagoras, and again Xenophanes and Hecataeus." As for Pythagoras, he "practised scientific inquiry beyond all other men, and making a selection of these writings, claimed for his own wisdom what was but a knowledge of many things and an imposture."3

Many of Heraclitus's sayings are pithy and pungent in character, if somewhat amusing on occasion. For example: "Physicians who cut, burn, stab and rack the sick, demand a fee for it which they do not deserve to get"; "Man is called a baby by God, even as a child by man"; "Asses prefer straw to gold"; "Man's character is his fate."​4 In regard to Heraclitus' attitude to religion, he had little respect for the mysteries, and even declares that "The mysteries practised among men are unholy mysteries."​5 Moreover, his attitude towards God was pantheistic, in spite of the religious language he employed.

 p39  The style of Heraclitus seems to have been somewhat obscure for he gained in later time the nickname of ὁ σκοτεινός. This practice appears to have been not altogether unintentional: at least we find among the fragments sentences such as: "Nature loves to hide"; "The lord whose is the oracle by Delphi neither utters nor hides its meaning, but shows it by a sign." And of his own messaging to mankind he says: "Men are as unable to understand it when they hear it for the first time, as before they have heard it at all."​6 Burnet points out that Pindar and Aeschylus possess the same prophetic tone, and attributes it in part to the contemporary religious revival.7

Heraclitus is known to many for the famous saying attributed to him, though apparently not his own: "All things are in a state of flux," πάντα ῥεῖ. Indeed this is all that many people know about him. This statement does not represent the kernel of his philosophic thought, though it does indeed represent an important aspect of his doctrine. Is he not responsible for the saying: "You cannot step twice into the same river, for fresh waters are ever flowing in upon you"?​8 Moreover, Plato remarks that "Heraclitus says somewhere that all things pass and nought abides; and comparing things to the current of a river, he says you cannot step twice into the same stream."​9 And Aristotle describes Heraclitus' doctrine as affirming that "All things are in motion, nothing steadfastly is."​10 In this respect Heraclitus is a Pirandello in the ancient world, crying out that nothing is stable, nothing abides, proclaiming the unreality of "Reality."

It would be a mistake, however, to suppose that Heraclitus meant to teach that there is nothing which changes, for this is contradicted by the rest of his philosophy.​11 Nor is the proclamation of change even the most important and significant feature of his philosophy. Heraclitus lays stress on his "Word," i.e. on his special message to mankind, and he could scarcely feel himself justified in doing this if the message amounted to no more than the truth that things are constantly changing; a truth seen by the other Ionian philosophers and hardly bearing the character of novelty. No, Heraclitus' original contribution to philosophy is  p40 to be found elsewhere: it consists in the conception of unity in diversity, difference in unity. In the philosophy of Anaximander, as we have seen, the opposites are regarded as encroaching on one another, and then as paying in turn the penalty for this act of injustice. Anaximenes regards the war of the opposites as something disorderly, something that ought not to be, something that mars the purity of the One. Heraclitus, however, does not adopt this point of view. For him the conflict of opposites, so far from being a blot on the unity of the One, is essential to the being of the One. In fact, the One only exists in the tension of opposites: this tension is essential to the unity of the One.

That Reality is One for Heraclitus is shown clearly enough in his saying: "It is wise to hearken, not to me, but to my Word, and to confess that all things are one."​12 On the other hand, that the conflict of opposites is essential to the existence of the One is also shown clearly by such statements as: "We must know that war is common to all and strife is justice, and that all things come into being and pass away through strife,"​13 and 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.​14 Again, Heraclitus says positively: "Men do not know how what is at variance agrees with itself. It is an attunement of opposite tensions, like that of the bow and the lyre."15

For Heraclitus, then, Reality is One; but it is many at the same time — and that not merely accidentally, but essentially. It is essential to the being and existence of the One that it should be one and many at the same time; that it should be Identity in Difference. Hegel's assignment of Heraclitus' philosophy to the category of Becoming is therefore based on a misconception — and also errs by putting Parmenides earlier than Heraclitus, for Parmenides was a critic as well as a contemporary of Heraclitus, and must be the later writer.​16 The philosophy of Heraclitus corresponds much more to the idea of the concrete universal, the One existing in the many, Identity in Difference.

But what is the One-in‑many? For Heraclitus, as for the Stoics of later times, who borrowed the notion from him, the essence of all things is Fire. Now, it might seem at first sight that Heraclitus is merely ringing the changes on the old Ionian theme — as  p41 though because Thales made Reality to be Water and Anaximenes Air, Heraclitus, simply in order to find something different from his predecessors, fixed on Fire. Naturally, the wish to find a different Urstoff may have operated to a certain extent, but there was something more in his choice of Fire than that: he had a positive reason, and a very good reason for fixing on Fire, a reason bound up with the central thought of his philosophy.

Sense-experience tells us that fire lives by feeding, by consuming and transforming into itself heterogeneous matter. Springing up, as it were, from a multitude of objects, it changes them into itself, and without this supply of material it would die down and cease to exist. The very existence of the fire depends on this "strife" and tension." This is, of course, a sensual symbolism of a genuine philosophic notion, but it clearly bears a relation to that notion that water or air will not so easily bear. Thus Heraclitus' choice of Fire as the essential nature of Reality was not due simply to arbitrary caprice on his part, nor merely to the desire for novelty, to the necessity of differing from his predecessors, but was suggested by his main philosophic thought. "Fire," he says, "is want and surfeit" — it is, in other words, all things that are, but it is these things in a constant state of tension, of strife, of consuming, of kindling and of going out.​17 In the process of fire Heraclitus distinguished two paths — the upward and the downward paths. "He called change the upward and the downward path and said that the cosmos comes into being by virtue of this. When fire is condensed it becomes moist, and under compression it turns to water; water being congealed is turned to earth, and this he calls the downward path. And, again, the earth is itself liquefied and from it water comes, and from that everything else; for he refers almost everything to the evaporation from the sea. This is the upward path."18

However, if it be maintained that all things are fire, and are consequently in a constant state of flux, it is clear that some explanation must be offered of what appears at least to be the stable nature of things in the world. The explanation offered by Heraclitus is in terms of measure: the world is "an ever-living Fire, with measures of it kindling and measures going out."​19 So if Fire takes from things, transforming into itself by kindling, it also gives as much as it takes. "All things are an exchange for Fire, and Fire for all things, even as wares for gold and gold for  p42 wares."​20 Thus, while the substance of each kind of matter is always changing, the aggregate quantity of that kind of matter remains the same.

But it is not only the relative stability of things that Heraclitus tries to explain, but also the varying preponderance of one kind of matter over another, as seen in day and night, summer and winter. We learn from Diogenes that Heraclitus explained the preponderance of different elements as due to "the different exhalations." Thus "the bright exhalation, when ignited in the circle of the sun, produced day; and the preponderance of the opposite exhalation produced night. The increase of warmth proceeding from the bright exhalation produced summer; and the preponderance of moisture from the dark exhalation produced winter."21

There is, as we have seen, constant strife in the universe, and there is also a relative stability of things, due to the different measures of Fire, kindling or going out in more or less equal proportions. And it is the fact of this measure, of the balance of the upward and downward paths, which constitutes what Heraclitus calls the "hidden attunement of the Universe," and which he declares is "better than the open."​22 "Men," says Heraclitus, in an already-quoted fragment, "do not know how what is at variance agrees with itself. It is an attunement of opposite tensions, like that of the bow and the lyre."​23 The One, in short, is its differences, and the differences are themselves one, they are different aspects of the one. Neither of the aspects, neither the upward nor the downward path, can cease: if they were to cease, then the One itself would no longer exist. This inseparability of opposites, the essential character of the different moments of the One, comes out in such sayings as: "The way up and the way down is the same," and "It is death to souls to become water and death to water to become earth. But water comes from earth and from water, soul."​24 It leads, of course, to a certain relativism, as in the statements that "Good and ill are one"; "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"; "Swine wash in the mire, and barnyard fowls in the dust."​25 However, in the One all tensions are reconciled, all differences harmonised. "To God all things are fair and good and right, but men hold some  p43 things wrong and some right."​26 This is, of course, the inevitable conclusion of a pantheistic philosophy — that everything is justified sub specie aeternitatis.

Heraclitus speaks of the One as God, and as wise: "The wise is one only. It is unwilling and willing to be called by the name of Zeus."​27 God is the universal Reason (Λόγος), the universal law immanent in all things, binding all things into a unity and determining the constant change in the universe according to universal law. Man's reason is a moment in this universal Reason, or a contraction and canalisation of it, and man should therefore strive to attain to the viewpoint of reason and to live by reason, realising the unity of all things and the reign of unalterable law, being content with the necessary process of the universe and not rebelling against it, inasmuch as it is the expression of all‑comprehensive, all‑ordering Λόγος or Law. Reason and consciousness in man — the fiery element — are the valuable element: when the pure fire leaves the body, the water and earth which are left behind are worthless, a thought which Heraclitus expresses in the saying: "Corpses are more fit to be cast out than dung."​28 A man's interest, then, is to preserve his soul in as dry a state as possible: "The dry is the wisest and best."​29 It may be pleasure to souls to become moist, but all the same "it is death to soul to become water."​30 Souls should strive to rise above the private worlds of the "sleeping" to the common world of the "waking," i.e. to the common world of thought and reason. This thought is of course the Word of Heraclitus. There is, then, one immanent law and Reason in the universe, of which human laws should be the embodiment, though at best they can be but its imperfect and relative embodiment. By stressing universal law and man's participation in Reason, Heraclitus helped to pave the way for the universalist ideals of Stoicism.

This conception of universal, all‑ordering Reason appears in the system of the Stoics, who borrowed their cosmology from Heraclitus. But we are not entitled to suppose that Heraclitus regarded the One, Fire, as a personal God, any more than Thales or Anaximenes regarded Water or Air as a personal God: Heraclitus was a pantheist, just as the Stoics in later times were pantheists. It is, however, true that the conception of God as the immanent, ordering Principle of all things, together with the moral attitude of acceptance of events as the expression of divine  p44 Law, tends to produce a psychological attitude that is at variance with what would seem to be logically demanded by the theoretical identification of God with the cosmic unity. This discrepancy between psychological attitude and the strict demands of theory became very clear in the Stoic School, the members of which so often betray a mental attitude and employ language that would suggest a theistic conception of God, rather than the pantheistic conception logically demanded by the cosmological system — a discrepancy which was aggravated among the later Stoics especially, owing to their increasing concentration on ethical questions.

Did Heraclitus teach the doctrine of a universal conflagration recurring periodically? As the Stoics certainly held this doctrine, and as they borrowed from Heraclitus, the doctrine of the periodic and universal conflagration has been attributed to Heraclitus too; but, for the following reasons, it does not seem possible to accept this attribution. In the first place, Heraclitus, as we have seen, insisted on the fact that the tension or conflict of opposites is essential to the very existence of the One. Now, if all things were periodically to relapse into pure fire, the fire itself should logically cease to exist. In the second place, does not Heraclitus expressly say that the "sun will not go beyond his measures; otherwise the Erinyes, the handmaids of Justice, will find him out,"​31 and "this world was ever, is now, and ever shall be an ever-living Fire, with measures of kindling and measures going out"? In the third place, Plato contrasts Heraclitus and Empedocles on the ground that, according to Heraclitus, the One is always Many, while, according to Empedocles, the One is many and one by turns.​32 When Professor Zeller says: "It is a contradiction which he, and probably Plato too, has not observed," he is making an unwarrantable supposition. Of course, if it were clear from certain evidence that Heraclitus actually did teach the doctrine of a periodic general conflagration then we should indeed have to conclude that the contradiction involved was unobserved by both Heraclitus himself and by Plato; but as evidence goes to show that Heraclitus did not teach this doctrine, we cannot reasonably be called upon to attribute a mistake to Plato in this matter. Moreover, it was apparently the Stoics who first stated that Heraclitus maintained the doctrine of a general conflagration;​33 and even the Stoics are divided on the subject. Does not Plutarch  p45 make a character say: "I see the Stoic conflagration spreading over the poems of Hesiod, just as it does over the writings of Heraclitus and the verses of Orpheus"?34

What are we to say of the doctrine of Heraclitus, the notion of unity in difference? That there is a many, a plurality, is clear enough. But at the same time the intellect constantly strives to conceive a unity, a system, to obtain a comprehensive view to link things up; and this goal of thought corresponds to a real unity in things: things are interdependent. Even man, with his immortal soul, depends on the rest of creation. His body depends, in a very real sense, on the whole past history of the world and of the human race: he depends on the material universe for life — bodily life through air, food, drink, sunlight, etc. — for his intellectual life too, through sensation as the starting-point of knowledge. He depends also for his cultural life on the thought and culture, the civilisation and development of the past. But though man is right in seeking a unity, it would be wrong to assert unity to the detriment of plurality. Unity, the only unity that is worth having, is a unity in difference, identity in diversity, a unity, that is to say, not of poverty, but of richness. Every material thing is a unity in diversity (consisting of molecules, atoms, electrons, etc.), every living organism also — even God Himself, as we know by Revelation, is Unity in Distinction of Persons. In Christ there is unity in diversity — unity of Person in diversity of Natures. The union of the Beatific Vision is a union in distinction — otherwise it would lose its richness (apart of course, from the impossibility of a "simple" unity of identification between God and creature).

Can we look on the created universe as a unity? The universe is certainly not a substance: it comprises a plurality of substances. It is, however, a totality in our idea of it, and if the law of the conservation of energy be valid, then it is in a sense a physical totality. The universe, then, may to a certain degree be considered a unity in diversity; but we may perhaps go further and suggest with Heraclitus that the conflict of opposites — change — is necessary to the existence of the material universe.

(i) As far as inorganic matter is concerned, change — at the very least in the sense of locomotion — is necessarily involved, at any rate if modern theories of the composition of matter, the theory of light, etc., are to be accepted.

 p46  (ii) This, too, is clear, that if there is to be finite, materially-conditioned life, then change is essential. The life of a bodily organism must be sustained by respiration, assimilation, etc., all of which processes involve change, and so the "conflict of opposites." The preservation of specific life on the planet involves reproduction, and birth and death may well be termed opposites.

(iii) Would it be possible to have a material universe in which there was no conflict of opposites, absolutely no change at all? In the first place, there could be no life in such a universe, for embodied life, as we have seen, involves change. But would it be possible to have a material universe — in which there was no life — that was entirely static, entirely without change and movement? If matter be regarded in terms of energy, it is very hard to see how there could be any such purely static material universe. But, prescinding from all physical theories, even if such a universe were physically possible, could it be rationally possible? We could at least discover no possible function for such a universe — without life, without development, without change, a sort of primitive chaos.

A purely material universe seems, then, to be inconceivable, not only a posteriori but also a priori. The idea of a material universe, in which organic life is present, demands change. But change means diversity on the one hand, for there must be a terminus a quo and a terminus ad quem of the change, and stability on the other hand, for there must be something which changes. And so there will be identity in diversity.

We conclude, therefore, that Heraclitus of Ephesus conceived a genuine philosophic notion, even though he pursued the same way of sensual symbolism as his Ionian predecessors, and the notion of the One as essentially many can be clearly discerned beneath all the sensual symbolism. Heraclitus did not indeed rise to the conception of substantial thought, the νόησις νοήσεως of Aristotle, nor did he sufficiently account for the element of stability in the universe as Aristotle tried to do; but, as Hegel says, "if we wish to consider fate so just as always to preserve to posterity what is best, we must at least say of what we have of Heraclitus, that it is worthy of this preservation."35

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The Author's Notes:

1 Frag. 121.

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2 Frag. 39.

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3 Frags. 42, 40, 129 (latter doubtful, acc. to D).

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4 Frags. 58, 79, 9, 119.

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5 Frag. 14.

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6 Frags. 123, 93, 1 (cf. 17, 34). Cf.  Diog. Laërt. 9.6.

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7 E. G. P., p132.

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8 Cf. Frags. 12 and 91.

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9 Crat. 402A.

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10 De Caelo, 298b30 (III, i).

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11 Heraclitus does indeed teach that Reality is constantly changing, that it is its essential nature to change; but this should not be interpreted as meaning that for him there is no changing Reality at all. Heraclitus has often been compared to Bergson, but Bergson's thought too has, not infrequently, been grossly, if understandably, misinterpreted.

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12 Frag. 50.

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13 Frag. 80.

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14 Numenius. Frag. 16, apud Chalcidium, c. 297 (D. 22 A 22).

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15 Frag. 51.

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16 Hegel, Hist, Phil., vol. I.

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17 Frag. 65.

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18 Diog. Laërt., 9.8‑9.

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19 Frag. 30.

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20 Frag. 90.

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21 Diog. Laërt., 9.11.

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22 Frag. 54.

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23 Frag. 51.

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24 Frags. 60, 36.

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25 Frags. 58, 61, 37.

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26 Frag. 102.

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27 Frag. 32.

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28 Frag. 96.

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29 Frag. 118.

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30 Frags. 77, 36.

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31 Frag. 94.

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32 Soph., 242D.

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33 Cf. E. G. P., pp159‑60.

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34 De def. orac., 415F.

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35 Hist. Phil., I, pp297‑8.

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