istence but only 'becoming,' i.e. a continual passing from one existence into another. Each moment is the union of opposites, being and not-being: the life of the world is maintained by confict, πόλεμος πατὴρ πάντων. Every particle of matter is in continual movement. All things are in flux like the waters of a river. One thing alone is permanent, the universal law which reveals itself in this movement. This is Zeus, the all-pervading reason of the world. It is only the illusion of the senses which makes us fancy that there are such things as permanent substances. Fire exhibits most clearly the incessant movement and activity of the world: confined in the body it constitutes the human soul, in the universe at large it is God (the substance and the process being thus identified). The fragmentary remains of Heraclitus abound in those pregnant oracular sayings for which he was so famous among the ancients. Such are the following, in which the law of man and the law of nature are connected with the Will and Word of God. Fr. 91', 'Understanding is common to all. When we speak with reason we must hold fast to that which is common, even as a city holds fast to the law, yea, and far more strongly: for all human laws are fed by one law, that of God, which prevails wherever it will, and suffices for all and surpasses.' Fr. 100, 'The law is the rampart of the city". Fr. 92, 1 I give the numbering of Mr Bywater's edition. * Ξυνόν ἐστι πᾶσι τὸ φρονέειν· ξὺν νόῳ λέγοντας ἰσχυρίζεσθαι χρὴ τῷ ξυνῷ πάντων, ὅκωσπερ νόμῳ πόλις καὶ πολὺ ἰσχυροτέρως. τρέφονται γὰρ πάντες οἱ ἀνθρώπειοι νόμοι ὑπὸ ἑνὸς τοῦ θείου· κρατέει γὰρ τοσοῦτον ὅκοσον ἐθέλει καὶ ἐξαρκέει πᾶσι καὶ περιγίνεται. 3 * Μάχεσθαι χρὴ τὸν δῆμον ὑπὲρ τοῦ νόμου ὅκως ὑπὲρ τείχεος. 'Reason is common to all, but most live as though understanding were their own'.' Fr. 29, ‘The sun shall not overpass his measure, else the Erinyes, the ministers of justice, will find him out. Fr. 19, Wisdom consists in one thing, to know the mind by which all through all is guided. Fr. 65, 'One thing alone wisdom willeth and willeth not to be spoken, the name of Zeus*.' I add a few apophthegms of a more miscellaneous character. Fr. 46, 'Out of discord proceeds the fairest harmony'.' Fr. 47, "The hidden harmony is better than that which is manifest.' Fr. 11, "The king to whom belongs the shrine at Delphi neither publishes nor conceals but shadows forth. the truth 7. Fr. 12, “The Sibyl, uttering with frenzied mouth words unmirthful, unadorned, untricked, reaches with her voice through a thousand years by the help of God.' Fr. 122, 'After death there await men such things 1 Τοῦ λόγου δ ̓ ἐόντος ξυνοῦ, ζώουσι οἱ πολλοὶ ὡς ἰδίην ἔχοντες φρόνησιν. 2 Ηλίος οὐχ ὑπερβήσεται μέτρα· εἰ δὲ μή, Ερινύες μιν δίκης ἐπίκουροι ἐξευρήσουσι. 3 Ἓν τὸ σοφόν, ἐπίστασθαι γνώμην ᾗ κυβερνᾶται πάντα διὰ πάντων. + Ἓν τὸ σοφὸν μοῦνον λέγεσθαι οὐκ ἐθέλει καὶ ἐθέλει, Ζηνὸς οὔνομα. * Ἐκ τῶν διαφερόντων καλλίστη ἁρμονία. 7 ̔Ο ἄναξ οὗ τὸ μαντεῖόν ἐστι τὸ ἐν Δέλφοις, οὔτε λέγει οὔτε κρύπτει, ἀλλὰ σημαίνει. 8 Σίβυλλα δὲ μαινομένῳ στόματι ἀγέλαστα καὶ ἀκαλλώπιστα καὶ ἀμύριστα φθεγγομένη χιλίων ἐτέων ἐξικνέεται τῇ φωνῇ διὰ τὸν θεόν, which Coleridge has thus translated (Lit. Rem. III. p. 419) -not hers To win the sense by words of rhetoric, as they think not nor expect'.' Fr. 4, 'Eyes and ears are bad witnesses when the soul is barbarous'.' "To him that hopes not, the unhoped will never come3.? Fr. 8, 'They that search for gold, dig much ground and find little'.' Fr. 16, 'Great learning does not teach wisdom. Fr. 75, "The dry light is the wisest soul".' Heraclitus is the first philosopher of whom we read that he referred to the doctrines of other philosophers. He is said to have spoken highly of some of the seven Wise Men, but condemned severely Pythagoras and Xenophanes as well as the poets Hesiod, Homer and Archilochus. Though I agree with Ueberweg in classing him with the older Ionics, yet his philosophy was no doubt largely developed with a reference to the rival schools of Italy. Thus there is something of a Pythagorean colour in fragments 46 and 47 quoted above. We must now cross the water with Pythagoras of 1 Ανθρώπους μένει τελευτήσαντας ἅσσα οὐκ ἔλπονται οὐδὲ δοκέουσι. 2 Κακοὶ μάρτυρες ἀνθρώποισι ὀφθαλμοὶ καὶ ὦτα, βαρβάρους ψυχὰς ἐχόντων. 3 ̓Εὰν μὴ ἔλπηαι, ἀνέλπιστον οὐκ ἐξευρήσει. 4 Χρυσὸν οἱ διζήμενοι γῆν πολλὴν ὀρύσσουσι καὶ εὑρίσκουσι ὀλίγον. 5 Πολυμαθίη νόον ἔχειν οὐ διδάσκει. 6 This has reference to the doctrine that fire is the essence of spirit. It was illustrated by the obscuration of the faculties in drunkenness, and by the supposed ill effect of a foggy district on the intelligence of the inhabitants. The siccum lumen of the Novum Organum is borrowed from it. There are three different forms of the original maxim, which may possibly be all due to Heraclitus, as we see from other fragments (e.g. 66) that he was fond of playing on words. In Fr. 74 it runs avŋ yvxǹ oopwrátŋ kaì åρíorŋ, in Fr. 75 αὐγὴ ξηρὴ ψυχὴ σοφωτάτη καὶ ἀρίστη, in Fr. 76 οὗ γῆ ξηρή, ψυχὴ σοφωτάτη καὶ ἀρίστη. Samos, born about 580 B.C., who settled at Crotona in Italy, 529 B.C., and there founded what is known as the Italic school'. He seems to have found in the mysteries and in the Orphic hymns the starting point which Thales had discovered in Homer; and there can be little doubt that his doctrine and system were also in part suggested by his travels in Egypt. He established a sort of religious brotherhood with strict rules and a severe initiation', insisted on training in gymnastics, mathematics and music, 1 There is no one of the early philosophers about whose history and doctrines it is more difficult to ascertain the exact truth than Pythagoras. This is owing in part to the fact that neither Pythagoras himself nor any of his immediate disciples committed their teaching to writing, and also that the earliest Pythagorean treatise, composed by Philolaus a contemporary of Socrates, is only known to us through fragments, the genuineness of which is disputed; but still more it is owing to the luxuriant growth of an apocryphal Pythagorean literature among later eclectic philosophers, who desired to claim the authority of Pythagoras for their own speculations. This was particularly the case with Neo-Pythagoreans and Neo-Platonists, such as Porphyry and Iamblichus, who selected him, as Philostratus had done Apollonius of Tyana, to be the champion of the old religion, and opposed his claims, as prophet and miracleworker, to those put forward by the Christians in the name of their Master or His Apostles. In the account which I have given in the text I have mainly followed Zeller who has examined the evidence with extreme care, testing all later reports by the statements of Plato and Aristotle. 2 It was said by later Pythagoreans that the noviciate lasted for five years, and that absolute silence had to be observed throughout that time. One rule strongly insisted on for all the brotherhood was daily self-examination, as we see by the following lines taken from the miscellaneous collection of Pythagorean precepts entitled the Golden Verses, which Mullach attributes to Lysis, the tutor of Epaminondas, but which, as a collection, are probably of much later date: and taught the doctrines of immortality and of the transmigration of souls, and the duty of great abstemiousness, if not, as some report, of total abstinence from animal food'. Three points may be noticed about this society, (r) their high ideal of friendship, evinced in the maxims κοινὰ τὰ τῶν φίλων εἶναι, τὸν δὲ φίλον ἄλλον ἑαυτόν, and in the well-known story of the devotion of Damon and Phintias; (2) the admission into their body, as into the Epicurean society of later times, of female associates, of whom the most distinguished was Theano, the wife of Μηδ ̓ ὕπνον μαλακοῖσιν ἐπ ̓ ὄμμασι προσδέξασθαι, πρὶν τῶν ἡμερινῶν ἔργων τρὶς ἕκαστον ἐπελθεῖν πῇ παρέβην; τί δ ̓ ἔρεξα; τί μοι δέον οὐκ ἐτελέσθη ; ̓Αρξάμενος δ ̓ ἀπὸ πρώτου ἐπέξιθι, καὶ μετέπειτα δειλὰ μὲν ἐκπρήξας ἐπιπλήσσει, χρηστὰ δὲ τέρπου. Plato (Rep. x. 600) bears witness to the marked character of the Pythagorean life (Πυθαγόρειος τρόπος τοῦ βίου) ; and Herodotus (11. 81) connects the religious rites practised by them with those of the Orphic sect and of the Egyptians, ὁμολογέουσι δὲ ταῦτα (the use of linen garments) τοῖσι Ορφικοῖσι καλεομένοισι καὶ Βακχικοῖσι, ἐοῦσι δὲ Αἰγυπτίοισι καὶ Πυθαγορείοισι. (I do not agree with Zeller in putting a comma after Αἰγυπτίοισι.) 1 The earliest notice we have of Pythagoras is contained in some verses of Xenophanes in which allusion is made to his doctrine of metempsychosis. Pythagoras is there said to have interceded for a dog which was being beaten, professing that he recognized in his cries the voice of a friend. καὶ ποτέ μιν στυφελιζομένου σκύλακος παριόντα παῦσαι, μηδὲ ῥάπιζ ̓, ἐπειὴ φίλου ἀνέρος ἐστὶ It was believed that he retained the memory of his own former transmigrations, and that he had once recognized a shield hanging up in a temple, as one which he had himself carried at Troy under the name of Euphorbus, (see Hor. Od. I. XXVIII. 1. 10). |