This is only a particular application of the universal principle that the primary fire is one even in its division. It itself is, even in its unity, both surfeit and want, war and peace (fr. [36]). In other words, the “satiety” which makes fire pass into other forms, which makes it seek “rest in change” (frs. [82], [83]), and “hide itself” (fr. [10]) in the “hidden attunement” of opposition, is only one side of the process. The other is the “want” which leads it to consume the bright vapour as fuel. The upward path is nothing without the downward (fr. [69]). If either were to cease, the other would cease too, and the world would disappear; for it takes both to make an apparently stable reality.
All other utterances of the kind are to be explained in the same way. If there were no cold, there would be no heat; for a thing can only grow warm if, and in so far as, it is already cold. And the same thing applies to the opposition of wet and dry (fr. [39]). These, it will be observed, are just the two primary oppositions of Anaximander, and Herakleitos is showing that the war between them is really peace, for it is the common element in them (fr. [62]) which appears as strife, and that very strife is justice, and not, as Anaximander had taught, an injustice which they commit one against the other, and which must be expiated by a reabsorption of both in their common ground.[[417]] The strife itself is the common ground (fr. [62]), and is eternal.
The most startling of these sayings is that which affirms that good and evil are the same (fr. [57]). This does not mean in the least, however, that good is evil or that evil is good, but simply that they are the two inseparable halves of one and the same thing. A thing can become good only in so far as it is already evil, and evil only in so far as it is already good, and everything depends on the contrast. The illustration given in fr. [58] shows this clearly. Torture, one would say, was an evil, and yet it is made a good by the presence of another evil, namely, disease; as is shown by the fact that surgeons expect a fee for inflicting it upon their patients. Justice, on the other hand, which is a good, would be altogether unknown were it not for the existence of injustice, which is an evil (fr. [60]). And that is why it is not good for men to get everything they wish (fr. [104]). Just as the cessation of strife in the world would mean its destruction, so the disappearance of hunger, disease, and weariness would mean the disappearance of satisfaction, health, and rest.
This leads to a theory of relativity which prepares the way for the doctrine of Protagoras, that “Man is the measure of all things.”[[418]] Sea-water is good for fish and bad for men (fr. [52]), and so with many other things. At the same time, Herakleitos is not a believer in absolute relativity. The process of the world is not merely a circle, but an “upward and downward path.” At the upper end, where the two paths meet, we have the pure fire, in which, as there is no separation, there is no relativity. We are told expressly that, while to man some things are evil and some things are good, all things are good to God (fr. [61]). Now by God there is no doubt that Herakleitos meant Fire. He also calls it the “one wise,” and perhaps said that it “knows all things.” There can hardly be any question that what he meant to say was that in it the opposition and relativity which are universal in the world disappear. It is doubtless to this that frs. [96], [97], and [98] refer.
The Wise.
81. Herakleitos speaks of “wisdom” or the “wise” in two senses. We have seen already that he said wisdom was “something apart from everything else” (fr. [18]), meaning by it the perception of the unity of the many; and he also applies the term to that unity itself regarded as the “thought that directs the course of all things.” This is synonymous with the pure fire which is not differentiated into two parts, one taking the upward and the other the downward path. That alone has wisdom; the partial things we see have not. We ourselves are only wise in so far as we are fiery (fr. [74]).
Theology.
82. With certain reservations, Herakleitos was prepared to call the one Wisdom by the name of Zeus. Such, at least, appears to be the meaning of fr. [65]. What these reservations were, it is easy to guess. It is not, of course, to be pictured in the form of a man. In saying this, Herakleitos would only have been repeating what had already been laid down by Anaximander and Xenophanes. He agrees further with Xenophanes in holding that this “god,” if it is to be called so, is one; but his polemic against popular religion was directed rather against the rites and ceremonies themselves than their mere mythological outgrowth. He gives a list (fr. [124]) of some of the most characteristic religious figures of his time, and the context in which the fragment is quoted shows that he in some way threatened them with the wrath to come. He comments upon the absurdity of praying to images (fr. [126]), and the strange idea that blood-guiltiness can be washed out by the shedding of blood (fr. [130]). He seems also to have said that it was absurd to celebrate the worship of Dionysos by cheerful and licentious ceremonies, while Hades was propitiated by gloomy rites (fr. [127]). According to the mystic doctrine itself, the two were really one; and the one Wisdom ought to be worshipped in its integrity.
The few fragments which deal with theology and religion hardly suggest to us that Herakleitos was in sympathy with the religious revival of the time, and yet we have been asked to consider his system “in the light of the idea of the mysteries.”[[419]] Our attention is called to the fact that he was “king” of Ephesos, that is, priest of the branch of the Eleusinian mysteries established in that city, which was also connected in some way with the worship of Artemis or the Great Mother.[[420]] These statements may be true; but, even if they are, what follows? We ought surely to have learnt from Lobeck by this time that there was no “idea” in the mysteries at all; and on this point the results of recent anthropological research have abundantly confirmed those of philological and historical inquiry.
Ethics of Herakleitos.