Heeaclitus of Ephesus

THE FRAGMENTS OP THE WOKK OF HEEACLITUS OF EPHESUS ON NATURE TRANSLATED FROM THE GREEK TEXT OF BYWATER, WITH AN INTRODUCTION HISTORICAL AND CRITICAL G. T. W. PATRICK, PH.D. PROFESSOR OF PHILOSOPHY IN THE STATE UNIVERSITY OF IOWA BALTIMOKE N. MURKAY 1889 5 JUG FB P3 [Reprinted from the AMEKICAN JOUKNAL OF PSYCHOLOGY, 1888.] A THESIS ACCEPTED FOR THE DEGREE OP DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY IN THE JOHNS HOPKINS UNIVERSITY, 1888. OF ISAAC FRIEDENWALD, BALTIMORE. I. All thoughts, all creeds, all dreams are true, All visions wild and strange ; Man is the measure of all truth Unto himself. All truth is change, All men do walk in sleep, and all Have faith in that they dream : For all things are as they seem to all, And all things flow like a stream. II. There is no rest, no calm, 110 pause, Nor good nor ill, nor light nor shade, Nor essence nor eternal laws : For nothing is, but all is made. But if I dream that all these are, for that I dream They are to me ; For all things are as they seem to all, And all things flow like a stream. Argal this very opinion is only true relatively to the flowing philosophers. TENNYSON. PREFACE. The latest writers on Heraclitus, namely, Gustav Teichmiiller and Edmund Pfleiderer, have thought it necessary to preface their works with an apology for adding other monographs to the Heraclitic literature, already enriched by treatises from such distinguished men as Schleiermacher, Lassalle, Zeller, and Schuster. That still other study of Heraclitus, however, needs no apology, will be admitted when it is seen that these scholarly critics, instead of determining the place of Heraclitus in the history of philosophy, have so far disagreed, that while Schuster makes him out to be a sensationalist and empiricist, Lassalle finds that he is a rationalist and idealist. While to Teichmiiller, his starting point and the key to his whole system is found in his physics, to Zeller it is found in his metaphysics, and to Pfleiderer in his religion. Heraclitus theology from was derived, according to Teichmiiller, Egypt ; India to Pfleid according to Lassalle, from ; according erer, fi >m the Greek Mysteries. The Heraclitic flux, according to Pfleiderer, was consequent on his abstract to his abstract theo theories ; according Teichmiiller, ries resulted from his observation of the flux. Pfleid Heraclitus Gottlob erer says that was an optimist ; VI PREFACE. Mayer says that he was a pessimist. According to Schuster he was a hylozoist, according to Zeller a pan theist, according to Pfleiderer a panzoist, according to Lassalle a panlogist. Naturally, therefore, in the hands of these critics, with their various theories to support, the remains of Heraclitus work have suffered a violence of interpretation only partially excused by his known obscurity. No small proportion of the fragments, as will be seen in my introduction, have been taken in a diametrically opposite sense. Recently a contribution towards the disentanglement of this maze has been made by Mr. Bywater, an acute English scholar. His work (Heracliti Ephesii Reli quiae, Oxford, 1877) is simply a complete edition of the now existing fragments of Heraclitus work, together with the sources from which they are drawn, with so much of the context as to make them intelligible. Under these circumstances I have thought that a translation of the fragments into English, that every man read may and judge for himself, would be the best contribution that could be made. The increasing interest in Greek early philosophy, and particularly in Heraclitus, who is the one Greek thinker most in accord with the thought of our century, makes such a translation and justifiable, the excellent and timely edition of the Greek text by Mr. Bywater makes it practicable. The translations both of the fragments and of the context are made from the original sources, though I PREFACE. VII have followed the text of Bywater except in a very few cases, designated in the critical notes. As a number of the fragments are ambiguous, and several of them contain a play upon words, I have appended the entire Greek text. The collection of sources is wholly that of Mr. Bywater. In these I have made a translation, not of all the references, but only of those from which the fragment is immediately taken, adding others only in cases of especial interest. My acknowledgments are due to Dr. Basil L. Gil- dersleeve, of the Johns Hopkins University, for kind suggestions concerning the translation, and to Dr. G. Stanley Hall for valuable assistance in relation to the plan of the work. BALTIMORE, SEPTEMBER 1, 1888. CONTENTS. INTRODUCTION. SECTION I. HISTORICAL AND CRITICAL. PAGE Literature 1 Over-systemization in Philosophy 2 Over-interpretation in Historical Criticism ... 3 Exposition of Lassalle 4 Hegel s Conception of Heraclitus 5 Criticism of Hegel s Conception 6 Criticism of Lassalle 9 Exposition of Schuster 11 Criticism of Schuster 17 Exposition of Teichmiiller 23 Criticism of Teichmiiller 31 Exposition of Pfleiderer 39 Criticism of Pfleiderer 46 SECTION II. RECONSTRUCTIVE. I. Can the Positions of the Critics be harmonized? 56 Heraclitus Starting-point 57 Heraclitus as a Preacher and Prophet 57 The Content of his Message 58 The Universal Order 60 Strife 62 The Unity of Opposites 63 The Flux 65 Cosmogony 68 Ethics 69 Optimism 71 X CONTENTS. II. Cause of the Present Interest in Heraclitus 72 Passion for Origins Greek Objectivity Heraclitic Ideas Relation to Socrates and Plato 75 Socrates Birth of Self-consciousness 77 Loss of Love of Beauty 78 Kise of Transcendentalism .... Platonic Dualism 80 Return to Heraclitus 82 Defeat of Heraclitus - TRANSLATION OF THE FRAGMENTS 84-114 CRITICAL NOTES 115-123 GREEK TEXT . 124-131 INTRODUCTION. SECTION I. HISTORICAL AND CRITICAL. Modern Heraclitic literature belongs wholly to the present century. The most important works are the following : Schleiermacher : Herakleitos, der Dunkle von Ephesos, in Wolf and Buttmann s Museum der Alterthumswissenschaft, Vol. I, 1807, pp. 313-533, and in Schleiermacher s Sammt. Werke, Abth. Ill, Vol. 2, 1-146 Jak. : Berlin, 1838, pp. ; Bernays Heraclitea, 1848 Heraklitische in Bonn, ; Studien, the Rhein. Mus., 1850 new series, VII, pp. 90-116, ; Neue Bruchstiicke des Heraklit, ibid. IX, pp. 241-269, 1854; Die Hera- klitischen : Briefe, Berlin, 1869 ; Ferd. Lassalle Die Philosophic Herakleitos des Dunkeln von Ephesos, 2 vols., Berlin, 1858 ; Paul Schuster: Heraklit von Ephesus, in Actis soc. phil. Lips. ed. Fr. Ritschelius, z. 1873, III, 1-397 ; Teichmiiller, Neue Stud. Gesch. der Begriffe, Heft I, Gotha, 1876, and II, 1878; Bywater : Heracliti Ephesii Reliquiae, Oxford, 1877 ; Edmund Pfleiderer : Die Philosophic des Heraklit von Ephesus im Lichte der 1886 Mysterienidee, Berlin, ; Eduard Zeller : Die Philosophic der Griechen, Bd. I, pp. 566-677. There may be mentioned also the following addi tional writings which have been consulted in the preparation of these pages : Gottlob Mayer : Heraklit von Ephesus und Arthur Schopenhauer, Heidelberg, 1886 : of ; Campbell Theaetetus Plato, Appendix A, 1883 A. : Oxford, ; W. Benn The Greek Philosophers, London, 1882. 2 HERACLITUS. After the introductory collection and arrangement of the Heraclitic fragments by Schleiermacher, and the scholarly discriminative work and additions of Bernays, four attempts have been made successively by Lassalle, Schuster, Teichmiiller, and Pfleiderer, to reconstruct or interpret the philosophical system of Heraclitus. The positions taken and the results arrived at by these eminent scholars and critics are largely, if not wholly, different and discordant. A brief statement of their several positions will be our best introduction to the study of Heraclitus at first hand, and at the same time will offer us incidentally some striking examples of prevalent methods of his toric criticism. One of the greatest evils in circles of philosophical and religious thought has always been the evil of over- systemization. It is classification, or the scientific method, carried too far. It is the tendency to arrange under any outlined system or theory, more facts than it will properly include. It is the temptation, in a word, to classify according to resemblances which are too faint or fanciful. In the field of historic criticism this evil takes the form of over-interpretation. Just as in daily life we interpret every sense perception according to our own mental forms, so we tend to read our own thoughts into every saying of the ancients, and then proceed to use these, often without dis honesty, to support our favorite modern systems. The use of sacred writings will naturally occur to every one as the most striking illustration of this over-interpre tation. Especially in the exegesis of the Bible has this of prostitution ancient writings to every man s religious views been long since recognized and condemned, and if most recently this tendency has been largely cor- HISTORICAL AND CRITICAL. 3 rected in religious circles, it is all the more deplorable, in philosophical criticism, to find it still flourishing. Unfortunately, this vice continues, and it appears nowhere more plainly than in the interpretation of Greek philosophy. There is a great temptation to modern writers to use the Greek philosophers as props to support their own systems a temptation to inter pret them arbitrarily, to look down upon them patron izingly, as it were, showing that what they meant was this or that modern thought, having only not learned to express themselves as well as we have. Among his torians of philosophy this appears as a one-sidedness, so that it is commonly necessary in reading a history of philosophy to make a correction for the author s " personal equation." The histories of Schwegler and of Lewes are examples the one biased by Hegel- ianism, the other by Positivism.

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