His doctrines respecting the human soul and human knowledge. All wisdom resided in the Universal Wisdom — individual Reason is worthless.
The like blending of metaphysics and physics — of the abstract and the concrete and sensible — is to be found in the statements remaining from Herakleitus respecting the human soul and human knowledge. The human soul, according to him, was an effluence or outlying portion of the Universal[96] — the fire — the perpetual movement or life of things. As such, its nature was to be ever in movement: but it was imprisoned and obstructed by the body, which represented the stationary, the fixed, the particular — that which resisted the universal force of change. So long as a man lived, his soul or mind, though thus confined, participated more or less in the universal movement: but when he died, his body ceased to participate in it, and became therefore vile, “fit only to be cast out like dung”. Every man, individually considered, was irrational;[97] reason belonged only to the universal or the whole, with which the mind of each living man was in conjunction, renewing itself by perpetual absorption, inspiration or inhalation, vaporous transition, impressions through the senses and the pores, &c. During sleep, since all the media of communication, except only those through respiration, were suspended, the mind became stupefied and destitute of memory. Like coals when the fire is withdrawn, it lost its heat and tended towards extinction.[98] On waking, it recovered its full communication with the great source of intelligence without — the universal all-comprehensive process of life and movement. Still, though this was the one and only source of intelligence open to all waking men, the greater number of men could neither discern it for themselves, nor understand it without difficulty even when pointed out to them. Though awake, they were not less unconscious or forgetful of the process going on around them, than if they had been asleep.[99] The eyes and ears of men with barbarous or stupid souls, gave them false information.[100] They went wrong by following their own individual impression or judgment: they lived as if reason or intelligence belonged to each man individually. But the only way to attain truth was, to abjure all separate reason, and to follow the common or universal reason. Each man’s mind must become identified and familiar with that common process which directed and transformed the whole: in so far as he did this, he attained truth: whenever he followed any private or separate judgment of his own, he fell into error.[101] The highest pitch of this severance of the individual judgment was seen during sleep, at which time each man left the common world to retire into a world of his own.[102]
[96] Sext. Empiric. adv. Mathem. vii. 130. ἡ ἐπιξενωθεῖσα τοῖς ἡμετέροις σώμασιν ἀπὸ τοῦ περιέχοντος μοῖρα.
Plutarch, Sympos., p. 644. νεκύες κοπρίων ἐκβλητότεροι.
Plutarch, Placit. Philos. i. 23, p. 884. Ἡράκλειτος ἠρεμίαν καὶ στάσιν ἐκ τῶν ὅλων ἀνῄρει· ἐστὶ γὰρ τοῦτο τῶν νεκρῶν.
[97] See Schleiermacher, Herakleitos, p. 522; Sext. Empir. adv. Mathem. viii. 286.
[98] The passage of Sextus Empiricus (adv. Mathem. vii. 127-134) is curious and instructive about Herakleitus.
Ἀρέσκει γὰρ τῷ φυσικῷ (Herakleitus) το περιέχον ἡμᾶς λογικόν τε ὂν καὶ φρενῆρες — τοῦτον δὴ τὸν θεῖον λόγον, καθ’ Ἡράκλειτον, δι’ ἀναπνοῆς σπάσαντες νοεροὶ γινόμεθα, καὶ ἐν μὲν ὕπνοις ληθαῖοι, κατὰ δὲ ἔγερσιν πάλιν ἔμφρονες. ἐν γὰρ τοῖς ὕπνοις μυσάντων τῶν αἰσθητικῶν πόρων χωρίζεται τῆς πρὸς τὸ περιέχον συμφυΐας ὁ ἐν ἡμῖν νοῦς, μονῆς τῆς κατὰ ἀναπνοὴν προσφύσεως σωζομένης οἱονεί τινος ῥίζης, χωρισθείς τε ἀποβάλλει ἢν πρότερον εἶχε μνημονικὴν δύναμιν. ἐν δὲ ἐγρηγορόσι πάλιν διὰ τῶν αἰσθητικῶν πόρων ὥσπερ διὰ τινῶν θυρίδων προκύψας καὶ τῷ περιέχοντι συμβάλλων λογικὴν ἐνδύεται δύναμιν. Then follows the simile about coals brought near to, or removed away from, the fire.
The Stoic version of this Herakleitean doctrine, is to be seen in Marcus Antoninus, viii. 54. Μηκέτι μόνον συμπνεῖν τῷ περιέχοντι ἀέρι, ἀλλ’ ἤδη καὶ συμφρονεῖν τῷ περιέχοντι πάντα νοερῷ. Οὐ γὰρ ἧττον ἡ νοερὰ δύναμις πάντη κέχυται καὶ διαπεφοίτηκε τῷ σπᾶσαι βουλομένῳ, ἥπερ ἡ ἀερώδης τῷ ἀναπνεῦσαι δυναμένῳ.