The Stoics, who took up the doctrine of Herakleitus with farther abstraction and analysis, distinguished and named separately matters which he conceived in one and named together — the physical inhalation of air — the metaphysical supposed influx of intelligence — inspiration in its literal and metaphorical senses. The word τὸ περιέχον, as he conceives it, seems to denote, not any distinct or fixed local region, but the rotatory movement or circulation of the elements, fire, water, earth, reverting back into each other. Lassalle, vol. ii. p. 119-120; which transition also is denoted by the word ἀναθυμίασις in the Herakleitean sense — cited from Herakleitus by Aristotle. De Animâ, i. 2, 16.
[99] Sextus Empiricus (adv. Math. vii. 132) here cites the first words of the treatise of Herakleitus (compare also Aristotle, Rhet. iii. 5). λόγου τοῦδε ἐόντος ἀξύνετοι γίγνονται ἄνθρωποι καὶ πρόσθεν ἢ ἀκοῦσαι καὶ ἀκούσαντες τὸ πρῶτον· — τοὺς δὲ ἄλλους ἀνθρώπους λανθάνει ὁκόσα ἐγερθέντες ποιοῦσιν ὅκωσπερ ὁκόσα εὕδοντες ἐπιλανθάνονται.
[100] Sext. Empiric. ib. vii. 126, a citation from Herakleitus.
[101] Sext. Emp. ib. vii. 133 (the words of Herakleitus) διὸ δεῖ ἕπεσθαι τῷ ξυνῷ· — τοῦ λόγου δὲ ἐόντος ξυνοῦ, ζώουσιν οἱ πολλοὶ ὡς ἰδίαν ἔχοντες φρόνησιν· ἡ δ’ ἔστιν οὐκ ἄλλο τι ἀλλ’ ἐξήγησις τοῦ τρόπου τῆς τοῦ πάντος διοικήσεως· διὸ καθ’ ὅ τι ἂν αὐτοῦ τῆς μνήμης κοινωνήσωμεν, ἀληθεύομεν, ἃ δὲ ἂν ἰδιάσωμεν, ψευδόμεθα.
[102] Plutarch, De Superstit. c. 3, p. 166, C. See also the passage in Clemens Alexandr. Strom. iv. 22, about the comparison of sleep to death by Herakleitus.
By Universal Reason he did not mean the Reason of most men as it is, but as it ought to be.
By this denunciation of the mischief of private judgment, Herakleitus did not mean to say that a man ought to think like his neighbours or like the public. In his view the public were wrong, collectively as well as individually. The universal reason to which he made appeal, was not the reason of most men as it actually is but that which, in his theory, ought to be their reason:[103] that which formed the perpetual and governing process throughout all nature, though most men neither recognised nor attended to it, but turned away from it in different directions equally wrong. No man was truly possessed of reason, unless his individual mind understood the general scheme of the universe, and moved in full sympathy with its perpetual movement and alternation or unity of contraries.[104] The universal process contained in itself a sum-total of particular contraries which were successively produced and destroyed: to know the universal was to know these contraries in one, and to recognise them as transient, but correlative and inseparable, manifestations, each implying the other — not as having each a separate reality and each excluding its contrary.[105] In so far as a man’s mind maintained its kindred nature and perpetual conjoint movement with the universal, he acquired true knowledge; but the individualising influences arising from the body usually overpowered this kindred with the universal, and obstructed the continuity of this movement, so that most persons became plunged in error and illusion.
[103] Sextus Empiricus misinterprets the Herakleitean theory when he represents it (vii. 134) as laying down — τὰ κοινῇ φαινόμενα, πιστὰ, ὡς ἂν τῷ κοινῷ κρινόμενα λόγῳ, τὰ δὲ κατ’ ἰδίαν ἑκάστῳ, ψευδῆ. Herakleitus denounces mankind generally as in error. Origen. Philosophum. i. 4; Diog. Laert. ix. 1.
[104] The analogy and sympathy between the individual mind and the Kosmical process — between the knowing and the known — was reproduced in many forms among the ancient philosophers. It appears in the Platonic Timæus, c. 20, p. 47 C.
Τὸ κινούμενον τῷ κινουμένῳ γιγνώσκεσθαι was the doctrine of several philosophers. Aristot. De Animâ, i. 2. Plato, Kratylus, p. 412 A: καὶ μὴν ἤ γε ἐπιστήμη μηνύει ὡς φερομένοις τοῖς πράγμασιν ἐπομένης τῆς ψυχῆς τῆς ἀξίας λόγου, καὶ οὔτε ἀπολειπομένης οὔτε προθεούσης. A remarkable passage from the comment of Philoponus (on the treatise of Aristotle De Animâ) is cited by Lassalle, ii. p. 339, describing the Herakleitean doctrine, διὰ τοῦτο ἐκ τῆς ἀναθυμιάσεως αὐτὴν ἔλεγεν (Herakleitus)· τῶν γὰρ πραγμάτων ἐν κινήσει ὄντων δεῖν καὶ τὸ γίνωσκον τὰ πράγματα ἐν κινήσει εἶναι, ἵνα συμπαράθεον αὐτοῖς ἐφάπτηται καὶ ἐφαρμόζῃ αὐτοῖς. Also Simplikius ap. Lassalle, p. 341: ἐν μεταβολῇ γὰρ συνεχεῖ τὰ ὄντα ὑποτιθέμενος ὁ Ἡράκλειτος, καὶ τὸ γνωσόμενον αὐτὰ τῇ ἐπαφῇ γίνωσκον, συνέπεσθαι ἐβούλετο ὡς ἀεὶ εἶναι κατὰ τὸ γνωστικὸν ἐν κινήσει.