[18] A doctrine of transmigration of souls is attributed to Hkl. by Schuster, Heraklit, p. 174 ff. (1873). The utterances of Herakleitos there quoted to prove this thesis (frr. 78, 67, 123 = 88, 62, 63) do not, however, imply anything of the kind and there is not the slightest indication in the whole of Hkl’s doctrinal system upon which a theory of the transmigration of the soul might be founded.
[19] To prove that Herakleitos spoke of a continuation of the life of the individual soul after its separation from the body, appeal is made partly to the statements of later philosophers, partly to actual utterances of Herakl. (cf. in particular Zeller, Greek Phil. to Socr. ii, 86; Pfleiderer, Philos. d. Heraklit im Lichte der Mysterienidee, p. 214 ff.). Platonist philosophers do, of course, attribute to Herakleitos a doctrine of the soul which taught the pre-existence of the individual soul, “its fall in birth,” and its departure into a separate life of its own after death (cf. Numenios ap. Porph., Ant. 10; Iamb., ap. Stob., Ecl. i, 375, 7; 38, 21 ff. W.; Aen. Gaz., Thphr., pp. 5, 7 Boiss.). These accounts, however, are plainly but private and arbitrary interpretations of Herakleitean sayings (μεταβάλλον ἀναπαύεται, κάματός ἐστι τοῖς αὐτοῖς ἀεὶ μοχθεῖν καὶ ἄρχεσθαι) in the light of the conceptions current among those philosophers themselves; they are homiletic, fancifully conceived expositions of very short and ambiguous texts, and can so much the less serve as witnesses of Herakleitos’ real opinions since Plotinos (4, 8, 1) openly admits that Herakl. in this matter has omitted σαφῆ ἡμῖν ποιῆσαι τὸν λόγον. Others read into certain Herakleitean utterances the Orphic doctrine of σῶμα—σῆμα, the entombment of the soul in the body (Philo, Leg. Alleg. 1, 33, i, p. 65 M.; S.E., P. iii, 230), which cannot, however, be seriously supposed to be his teaching. The soul did not for Hkl., any more than for the Pythagoreans or Platonics, [393] come into existence at birth (substantially) out of nothing (which was the popular idea); it rather, as a portion of the universal fire (the universal psyche) is in existence from eternity. But it certainly does not follow, because later writers insisted on finding in him the idea so familiar to themselves, that Hkl. himself accepted the pre-existence of disembodied separate souls possessing complete and absolute individuality. A few enigmatic and highly picturesque expressions—typical of this philosopher’s favourite manner of expressing abstract ideas by clothing them in symbolic imagery—might tempt to such an interpretation. ἀθάνατοι θνητοί, θνητοὶ ἀθάνατοι, ζῶντες τὸν ἐκείνων θάνατον τὸν δὲ ἐκείνων βίον τεθνεῶτες (fr. 67 = 62)—that certainly does sound as if Hkl. had meant to speak of the entrance into the human life of individual divine beings (and this was simply substituted in inaccurate quotations of the saying: θεοὶ θνητοί, ἄνθρωποι ἀθάνατοι, etc.; cf. Bernays, Heraklit. Briefe, 39 ff.). And yet Herakleitos can only have meant, in conformity with his whole position, that eternal and perishable, divine and human are alike and interchangeable; he has for the moment personified τὸ θεῖον (also called ὁ θεός fr. 36 = 67; cf. fr. 61 = 102) as individual ἀθάνατοι, but he only means what he says in another place: ταὐτὸ τὸ ζῶν καὶ τεθνηκός (fr. 78 = 88), βίος and θάνατος are the same (fr. 66 = 48). It seems to me impossible to extract from these words of this 67th fragment (62nd), or from no. 44 (= 53), a doctrine of the ascent to divinity of special great men (with Gomperz, Sitzb. Wien. Ak. 1886, p. 1010, 1041 f.). Nor would anything be asserted by such a doctrine about the immortality of such men. The striking phrase ἀνθρώπους μένει τελευτήσαντας ἅσσα οὐκ ἔλπονται (fr. 122 = 27) is certainly understood by Cl. Al. as referring to the punishment of the soul after death. But the same Cl. Al., Str. v, 9, p. 649 P., is capable of explaining the Herakleitean ἐκπύρωσις (in which Herakl. actually speaks of a κρίσις by fire: fr. 26 = 66) as a διὰ πυρὸς κάθαρσις τῶν κακῶς βεβιωκότων. In fact, he is giving to statements torn from their context a meaning that accords with his own knowledge and comprehension. The same sentence (fr. 122 = 27) is given a quite different and consolatory sense by Plu. ap. Stob., Fl. 120, 8 fin.; cf. Schuster, Heraklit, p. 190, n. 1. Herakl. himself need have meant nothing more than the perpetual process of change that “awaits men after death”.—Other utterances are no more conclusive for a doctrine of immortality in Hkl. (fr. 7 = 18 belongs to quite another context). “Those who have fallen in war are honoured both by gods (whose existence was not denied by Hkl. nor was it necessary that he should) and men,” fr. 102 = 24; that their reward was anything else but fame—for example, blessed immortality—is not suggested even by Cl. Al. (Str. iv, 16, p. 571 P.), and is certainly not to be extracted from H.’s words, fr. 126 = 5 (the fool) οὕτι γινώσκων θεοὺς οὐδ’ ἥρωας οἵτινές εἰσιν simply shows that Hkl. did not share the popular ideas about gods and Heroes, but supplies nothing positive.—In fr. 38 = 98 we have αἱ ψυχαὶ ὀσμῶνται καθ’ ᾅδην. Are we really to deduce from this that Herakl. believed in a regular Homeric Hades? ᾅδης is a metaphorical expression for the opposite of the life on earth (just as it is used metaphorically for the opp. of φάος by the Herakleitean [Hippocr.] de Victu, 1, 4, p. 632 Kühn = vi, 476 Lit.). For the souls ᾅδης means the ὅδος κάτω and the sense of the dictum is: after disappearing in death the souls when they have travelled on the way downwards through water and earth will at last rise up again through water, and drawing in to themselves pure, dry “fire” will become “souls” again, (ὀσμῶνται is remarkable [394] but not to be altered. ὁσιοῦνται Pfleiderer; but the connexion in which Plu. quotes the saying of Herakl. [Fac. O. L. xxviii, p. 943 E] shows that there is no reference to the purification of the souls in Hades, but merely of their nourishment and strengthening by the ἀναθυμίασις of the fiery aether; cf. also S.E., M. ix, 73, following Poseidonios. This ἀναθυμιᾶν—and the becoming “fiery” again—is what Hkl. calls ὀσμᾶσθαι.)—From the hopelessly corrupt fr. 123 = 63 nothing intelligible can be extracted.—Nowhere can we find clear and unambiguous statements of Herakleitos witnessing to his belief in the immortality of the individual soul; and it would require such statements to make us attribute to Herakleitos a conception that, as everyone admits, is in hopeless contradiction with the rest of his teaching. He says perfectly plainly that in death the soul becomes water; and that means that it, as the soul = fire, perishes. If his belief had been anything like that of the mystics (as the Neoplatonists supposed) he must have regarded death—the liberation of the soul from the fetters of corporeality and the realm of the lower elements—as a complete issue of the soul into its proper element, the fire. Whereas, what he teaches is the opposite of this: the soul perishes, becomes water, then earth, and then water again, and finally soul once more (fr. 68 = 36). Only in this sense is it indestructible.
[20] e.g. by Pfleiderer, Philos. d. Heraklit, etc., p. 209, and frequently.
[21] The Sibyl fr. 12 = 92; the Delphic Oracle 11 = 93; Kathartic practices 130 = 5; Bakchoi, etc., 124 = 14.
[22] ὡυτὸς Ἅιδης καὶ Διόνυσος fr. 127 = 15 (and to that extent—as being reconcilable with the doctrine of Hkl.—may the Dionysiac mysteries be considered valid: this must be the meaning of the sentence). On the other hand, we have disapproval of the μυστήρια carried out ἀνιερωστί by men: fr. 125 = 14 (for the worshippers do not perceive the real meaning of the ceremonies).
[23] In contrast to the Neoplatonic writers who attributed to Hkl. a doctrine of the soul like the Orphico-Pythagorean, the [Plutarchian] account in the Placita Philos. is again much nearer the real meaning of Herakleitos; cf. 4, 7 (where the name of Herakleitos has fallen out, as can be seen from Theodoret; see Diels, Dox., p. 392; Vors. 76, 1) . . . ἐξιοῦσαν (τὴν ἀνθρώπου ψυχὴν) εἰς τὴν τοῦ παντὸς ψυχὴν ἀναχωρεῖν πρὸς τὸ ὁμογενές. Even this is not quite correct as expressing what Hkl. really thought as to the fate of the soul but it does at least show once more that the contrary views of the Neoplatonists are also only interpretations, not evidence.
[24] Ἡράκλειτος ἠρεμίαν καὶ στάσιν ἐκ τῶν ὅλων ἀνῄρει· ἔστι γὰρ τοῦτο τῶν νεκρῶν. Dox., p. 320; Vors. 73, 10. στάσις and ἠρεμία could never make a real “life”—not even a blessed life far removed from the world—but are signs of what is “dead”, i.e. of what is nowhere to be found in this world, in fact, Nothing.
[25] Parmenldes’ polemic against Herakleitos: l. 46 ff. Mull.; fr. 6, 4 ff. Diels; see Bernays, Rh. Mus. vii, 115 (cf. Diels, Parm. 68).
[26] Aristotle (acc. to S.E., M. x, 46; Vors. 142, 33 ff.) ἀφυσίκους αὐτοὺς κέκληκεν, ὅτι ἀρχὴ κινησεώς ἐστιν ἡ φύσις, ἣν ἀνεῖλον φάμενοι μηδὲν κινεῖσθαι.
[27] Thphr., Sens. § 4; Vors. 146, 13 f.