The original impetus for these notes, and many of the ideas in them, came from Heraclitus. He was alive at Ephesus in Asia Minor five hundred years before Christ. That is certain; all the rest is more or less plausible legend. It is said that he was of a ruling family, but refused to rule; that he went to the best schools but claimed that he had educated himself; that he preferred playing with children and wandering about the mountains to listening to the glossy platitudes of his eminent contemporaries; that he was invited by Darius to his court, but refused; that he loved riddles and was called the ‘Dark’, that he hated the masses of his day, the Many, and that he died miserably. All that remains of his teaching can be printed in a dozen pages. The following are the main fragments of his teaching, some original and some as filtered through in the Hippocratic corpus.
* * * This world, which is the same for all, was made by neither a god nor a man.
The opposite is beneficial.
If it were not for injustice, men would not know justice.
War [all biological conflict] is justice, because everything comes into being through War.
The beginning and the end are the same.
Even sleepers are workers.
The keraunos [the thunderbolt, chaos, hazard] steers all things.
Change is rest.
All that we see is death.
The one and only wisdom is both willing and unwilling to be called God.
Humanity has no understanding; but the Logos [divine law, evolution] has.
How can you hide from what is always present?
It is not better that men should have all they want.
Man, like a light in the night, is kindled and put out.
To God, all things are good and fair and just. It is men who suppose that some things are fust, others unjust.
The Many turn their backs on what concerns them most.
The one most in repute knows what is reputed, and no more. But justice will always overtake the liars and charlatans.
Much learning does not teach understanding.
The Many know neither how to listen nor how to speak.
The Many pray to images, as if they could speak to houses. They do not understand either gods or philosophers.
Dionysus [ritualistic religion] is the same as hell.
The Many misinterpret the events of their lives; they learn of things; and then they think they know them.
Even asses know straw is better than gold.
Though the Logos [the law of evolution] is ubiquitous, the Many behave as if each had a private wisdom of his own.
Custom and nature do not agree, for the Many formed custom without understanding nature.
As a child to the man, man to the Logos.
The aristos [the good man by Heraclitus’ definition of what constitutes good – independence of judgement and the pursuit of inner wisdom and inner knowledge] is worth ten thousand others.
Wisdom consists of one thing – to know what steers all through all.
Those who are awake [each aristos] have one world in common, those who are asleep [the Many] live each in a private world.
All men have one concern: to know themselves, and be sober.
The greatest virtue is to say and act the truth within the limitations of nature.
Sometimes obey one only.
Gold miners dig much and find little.
To verify statements and to make original statements require equal intelligence.
Nightwalkers [lovers of obscurity], Magians [professional mystifiers], priests of Bacchus and priestesses of the vat, and the initiated [the elect who brag of their election] are evil.
Religious rites are unholy.
Lovers of wisdom must know many things.
A dry soul is wisest and best.
Man grows from his smallest to his greatest by removing excess and remedying deficiency.
The oracle at Delphi neither hides nor states, but gives signs.
What sense have they [so-called educated men]? They follow the names in repute and are influenced by the Many, not seeing that among the names in repute there are many bad and few good. But the aristos chooses one thing above all others – immortal glory among mortals, while the Many glut themselves like beasts.
Man must cling to what is common to all, as a city clings to its laws.
Time is as a child playing draughts. Dogs also bark at a man they do not know [the Many and the aristos].
If you do not expect it, you will not find out the unexpected.
The road up and the road down are the same road.
Potters use a wheel that goes neither forwards nor backwards, yet goes both ways at once. So it is like the cosmos. On this wheel is made pottery of every shape and yet no two pieces are identical, though all are made of the same materials and with the same tools.
What is not cannot come into being. From where will it come? But all diminishes and increases to the greatest possible maximum and the least possible minimum. ‘Becoming’ and ‘perishing’ are popular expressions; they are really ‘mixing’ and ‘separating’. Becoming and perishing are the same thing, mixing and separating are the same thing; increase and diminution are the same thing; they are all the same thing and so is the relation of the individual to all things, and all things to the individual; yet in spite of appearances nothing of all things is the same.
Men saw a log, one pushes, the other pulls. But in doing this they are doing the same thing. While making less, they make more. Such is the nature of man.
Fire and water are sufficient for one another and for everything else. But each by itself is sufficient neither for itself nor for anything else. Neither can become the complete master. When fire has finished all the water, it lacks nourishment, and conversely the water with the fire. Its motion fails, it stops, what remains of the other attacks. If either were to be mastered, nothing would be as it is. Fire and water suffice for all that exists to their maximum and minimum degree alike.
