§ 3
In the teaching of Herakleitos of Ephesos the living power of the primal essence—the one[10] and universal, out of which arises through change the many and the particular, which manifests itself in the union, regarded as indissoluble, of matter and motive force—received even greater prominence than with the older Ionians. By them matter itself—described as either limited or not limited in reference to one particular quality—is regarded as self-evidently in motion. For Herakleitos the origin of all multiplicity lies rather in the creative energy of absolute Life itself which is at the same time a definite material substance or analogous to one of the known substances. The idea of life, and that form of it which makes its appearance in man, must have been more important for him than for any of his predecessors.
This never-resting force and activity of becoming that has neither beginning nor end, is represented by the Hot and Dry and called by the name of that elementary condition which cannot be thought of as ceasing to move, namely, Fire. The ever-living (ἀείζωον) fire, which periodically kindles itself and periodically goes out (Bywater, fr. 20), is formed entirely of movement and livingness. Living belongs to everything; but living is becoming, changing, becoming something different without cessation. Every appearance brings forth from itself, at the moment of its appearance, the opposite of itself. Birth, life, and death, and fresh birth clash together in a single burning moment, like the lightning (fr. 28).
That which thus moves itself in unceasing vitality and has all its being in becoming; which perpetually changes and “in backward-straining effort” finds itself again—this is something endowed with reason, creative in accordance with reason and “art”; is Reason (λόγος) itself. In creating the world it loses itself in the elements; it suffers its “death” (frr. 66, 67) when in the “Way downwards” it becomes water and earth (fr. 21). There are degrees of value in the elements decided by the relation which they hold towards the moving and self-vivifying fire. But that which in the multiplicity of the phenomena in the world, yet preserves its godlike fiery nature—this is for Herakleitos “psyche”. Psyche is fire.[11] Fire and psyche are interchangeable terms.[12] And so, too, the psyche of man is fire, a part of the universal fiery [368] energy that surrounds it and upholds it, through the “inhalation” of which it maintains itself alive;[13] a portion of the World-Reason by participation in which it is itself rational. In men God is living.[14] But god does not descend into man, as in the teaching of the Theologians, entering as a finite individuality into the vessel of the individual human life. As a united whole he surrounds men with his flood and reaches after and into them, as though with fiery tongues. A portion[15] of his universal Wisdom is living in the soul of man: the “drier”, more fiery, nearer to the universal Fire and further from the less living elements he is, the wiser will he be (frr. 74, 75, 76). If he sundered himself from the universal wisdom, man would become nothing; it is his business in thinking, as in acting and in moral behaviour, to surrender himself to the One Living essence that “nourishes” him and is the Mind and Law of the world (frr. 91, 92, 100, 103).
But the soul itself is also a portion of the universal Fire that in the perpetual variation of its form of being has been encompassed by the body and become entangled in corporeality. Here we no longer have the rigid, unmediated contrast between “Body” and “Soul” such as it appeared from the standpoint of the theologian. The elements of the body, water and earth, have themselves arisen and perpetually arise out of the fire which changes into all other things, and into which everything else changes (fr. 22). So it is the soul itself, the creative fire, which creates the body. “Soul,” i.e. Fire, unceasingly turns itself into the lower elements; there is no contrast between them, and it is but a continual flux of transition.
While it is enclosed in the body the soul is still affected by unceasing change. In this it is like everything else. Nothing in the world can for a single moment preserve the parts which compose it unaltered; the perpetual movement and alteration of its being constitute its life. The sun itself, the greatest fire-body, becomes another sun every day (fr. 32). So, too, the soul, though distinct from the body and a self-existing substance, yet is a substance that never remains like itself. In unceasing alteration of its material substance, its contents are perpetually being transposed. It loses its fire of life in the lower elements; it absorbs fresh fire from the living Fire of the universe that surrounds it. There can be no question of the permanent identity of the soul, of the spiritual personality, with itself. What in the unbroken process of upward and downward straining seems to maintain itself as a single person, is in reality a series of souls and [369] personalities, one taking the place of another and ousting and being ousted in turn.
Thus, even while it is in life, the soul is perpetually dying—but to live again; ever supplementing the departing soul-life or supplying its place with another. So long as it can recruit itself from the surrounding World-Fire, so long the individual lives. Separation from the source of all life, the living and universal fire of the world, would be death for it. The soul may temporarily lose its life-giving contact with the “common world”: this happens in sleep and dreaming which enclose it in their own world (frr. 94, 95), and this is already a partial death to it. Sometimes, too, the soul has a tendency to transform itself to a humidity not always made good by fresh fire; the drunkard has a “moist soul” (fr. 73). Finally, there comes the moment when the soul of man cannot any longer repair the loss of the living fire which is taken from it in the perpetual alteration of its matter. Then it dies; death carries off the last of the series of living fires which in their continuity made up the human soul.[16]
But in Herakleitos’ world there is no such thing as death in the absolute sense—an end followed by no beginning, an unconditional cessation of becoming. “Death” is for him only a point where one condition of things gives way to another; a relative “not-being”, involving death for one but simultaneously bringing birth and life for another (frr. 25, [64], 66, 67). Death, just as much as life, is for him a positive thing. “Fire lives the death of earth, and air lives the death of fire; water lives the death of air, and earth the death of water” (fr. 25). The One that is in all things is at once dead and alive (fr. 78), immortal and mortal (fr. 67); a perpetual “death and becoming” agitates it. So, too, the “death” of man must be the exit from one positive state of things, and the entry into another, also positive, condition. Death occurs for man when the “soul” is no longer within him. Only the body is then left; alone and by itself it is no better than dung (fr. 85). But the soul—what becomes of that? It must have altered; it was fire, but now it has descended on the “Way downwards” and become water—to become earth after that. So it must happen to all fire. In death the fire in man “goes out” (fr. 77). “It is death for the souls to become water” says Herakleitos clearly enough (fr. 68).[17] The soul must tread this path at last, and treads it willingly; change is for the soul its delight and refreshment (fr. 83). The soul has then changed itself into the elements of the body, has lost itself in the body. [370]
But it cannot rest permanently in this transformation. “For the souls it is death to become water; for the water it is death to become earth. And yet from earth comes water; and from water, soul” (fr. 68). Thus, in the restless up and down of becoming, in the “Way upwards” the soul reconstitutes itself out of the lower elements. But not that soul which had formerly animated the particular individual and of whose complete self-identity in the midst of the influx of the Fire-spirit there could be no question even during the life of the body. The inquiry after an individual immortality or even a continued existence of the separate soul could hardly have had any meaning at all for Herakleitos. Nor can he have admitted it under the form of the “transmigration of the soul”.[18] It is quite certain that Herakleitos can never have distinctly asserted the changeless persistence of the individual human soul in the midst of the unbroken stream of becoming in which all fixity is nothing but an illusion of the senses. But it is also incredible that, in despite of his own fundamental principles, he even admitted the possibility of this popular view with an indulgence quite foreign to his nature.[19] What could have tempted him to do so? We are told[20] that it was from the mysteries that he adopted this opinion which was one of their most important doctrines. Herakleitos, however, only casts an occasional glance at the mysteries and what might be called their “doctrine” (just as he glanced at other prominent manifestations of the excited religious life of his time[21]); and he does so in order to harmonize their teaching with his own—a result which he achieves rather by imposing an interpretation than by patiently eliciting one. He demonstrates that the mysteries might be harmonized with his own doctrine,[22] which seemed to him able to explain all the phenomena of the world; that contrariwise he ever sought to set his own teaching in harmony with that of the mysteries, or that the latter had shown him the way to his thought, or could ever have tempted him to set foot outside his own self-chosen path—of this there is not a scrap of evidence to be had.
The individual in its isolation has, for Herakleitos, neither value nor importance: to persist in this isolation (if it had been possible) would have seemed to him a crime.[23] The Fire is for him indestructible and immortal as a totality, not as divided into individual particles, but only as the one Universal Mind that transforms itself into all things and draws all things back again into itself. The soul of man has a claim to immortality as an emanation of this universal Reason, [371] and shares the immortality which belongs to it. So, too, the soul, even when it has lost itself in the elements, finds itself again. Between “want” and “satisfaction” (frr. 24, 36), this process of becoming has its perpetual being. A day will come when the Fire will “overtake” everything (fr. 26); God will then be utterly by himself—all in all. But that is not the purpose of this world; here change, becoming and passing away will never end. Nor should they end; the “Strife” (fr. 43) which has created the world, and ever fashions it anew, is the most inward nature of the All-living which it perpetually stirs to insatiable desire of becoming. For the desire and refreshment of all things is Change (frr. 72, 83), the coming and going in the interplay of Becoming.
It is the precise opposite of a quietistic mood that speaks from the whole teaching of Herakleitos. His voice is a trumpet call that grows louder and louder as his lofty and majestic spirit with ever-increasing intensity proclaims prophet-like the last word of wisdom. He knows well that it is only labour that can give meaning to rest, and hunger to satisfaction; only sickness can call forth the desire of health (fr. 104). That is the law of the world which binds together the opposing contraries, each of which is engendered from the last, with an inward and complete necessity. He bows before it and assents to it. For him the fixity of the soul in a Blessedness that was without activity and without change—even if such were thinkable[24]—would not have seemed a possible goal of desire.