[374]. That the Fire of Herakleitos was something on the same level as the “Air” of Anaximenes and not a “symbol,” is clearly implied in such passages as Arist. Met. Α, 3. 984 a 5. In support of the view that something different from common fire is meant, Plato, Crat. 413 b, is sometimes quoted; but a consideration of the context shows that the passage will not bear this interpretation. Plato is discussing the derivation of δίκαιον from δια-ιόν, and certainly δίκη was a prominent Herakleitean conception, and a good deal that is here said may be the authentic doctrine of the school. Sokrates goes on to complain that when he asks what this is which “goes through” everything, he gets very inconsistent answers. One says it is the sun. Another asks if there is no justice after sunset, and says it is simply fire. A third says it is not fire itself, but the heat which is in fire. A fourth identifies it with Mind. Now all we are entitled to infer from this is that different accounts were given in the Herakleitean school. These were a little less crude than the original doctrine of the master, but for all that not one of them implies anything immaterial or symbolical. The view that it was not fire itself, but Heat, which “passed through” all things, is related to the theory of Herakleitos as Hippo’s Moisture is related to the Water of Thales. It is quite likely, too, that some Herakleiteans attempted to fuse the system of Anaxagoras with their own, just as Diogenes of Apollonia tried to fuse it with that of Anaximenes. We shall see, indeed, that we still have a work in which this attempt is made (p. 167, [n. 383]).
[375]. Plato, Tht. 152 e 1; Crat. 401 d 5, 402 a 8; Arist. Top. Α, 11. 104 b 22; de Caelo, Γ, 1. 298 b 30; Phys. Θ, 3. 253 b 2.
[376]. See above, Chap. I. [§ 29].
[377]. See, however, the remark of Diels quoted R. P. 36 c.
[378]. Diog. ix. 8, σαφῶς δ’ οὐθὲν ἐκτίθεται.
[379]. This was written in 1890. In his Herakleitos von Ephesos (1901) Diels takes it as I did, rendering Glutwind.
[380]. Cf. Herod. vii. 42, and Lucretius, vi. 424. Seneca (Quaest. Nat. ii. 56) calls it igneus turbo. The opinions of early philosophers on these phenomena are collected in Aetios, iii. 3. The πρηστήρ of Anaximander (Chap. I. p. 69, [n. 133]) is a different thing altogether, but it is quite likely that Greek sailors named the meteorological phenomenon after the familiar bellows of the smith.
[381]. Aet. iii. 3, 9, πρηστῆρας δὲ κατὰ νεφῶν ἐμπρήσεις καὶ σβέσεις (sc. Ἡράκλειτος ἀποφαίνεται γίγνεσθαι). Diels (Herakleitos, p. v.) seems to regard the πρηστήρ as the form in which water ascends to heaven. But the Greeks were well aware that waterspouts burst and come down.
[382]. Arist. de An. Β, 2. 405 a 26, τὴν ἀναθυμίασιν ἐξ ἧς τἆλλα συνίστησιν.
[383]. The presence of Herakleitean matter in this treatise was pointed out by Gesner, but Bernays was the first to make any considerable use of it in reconstructing the system. The older literature of the subject has been in the main superseded by Carl Fredrichs’ Hippokratische Untersuchungen (1899), where also a satisfactory text of the sections which concern us is given for the first time. Fredrichs shows that (as I said already in the first edition) the work belongs to the period of eclecticism and reaction which I have briefly characterised in [§ 184], and he points out that c 3, which was formerly supposed to be mainly Herakleitean, is really from some work which was strongly influenced by Empedokles and Anaxagoras. I think, however, that he goes wrong in attributing the section to a nameless “Physiker” of the school of Archelaos, or even to Archelaos himself; it is far more like what we should expect from the eclectic Herakleiteans whom Plato describes in Crat. 413 c (see p. 161, [n. 374]). He is certainly wrong in holding the doctrine of the balance of fire and water not to be Herakleitean, and there is no justification for separating the remark quoted in the text from its context because it happens to agree almost verbally with the beginning of c. 3. As we shall see, that passage too is of Herakleitean origin.