Between Pythagoras and Heraclitus, with whom we shall be con-
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cerned in this chapter, there was another philosopher, of less importance, namely Xenophanes. His date is uncertain, and is mainly determined by the fact that he alludes to Pythagoras and Heraclitus alludes to him. He was an Ionian by birth, but lived most of his life in southern Italy. He believed all things to be made out of earth and water. As regards the gods he was a very emphatic free thinker. «Homer and Hesiod have ascribed to the gods all things that are a shame and a disgrace among mortals, stealings and adulteries and deceivings of one another. . . . Mortals deem that gods are begotten as they are, and have clothes like theirs, and voice and form . . . yes, and if oxen and horses or lions had hands, and could paint with their hands, and produce works of art as men do, horses would paint the forms of gods like horses, and oxen like oxen, and make their bodies in the image of their several kinds. . . . The Ethiopians make their gods black and snub-nosed; the Thracians say theirs have blue eyes and red hair.» He believed in one God, unlike men in form and thought, who «without toil swayeth all things by the force of his mind.» Xenophanes made fun of the Pythagorean doctrine of transmigration: «Once, they say, he ( Pythagoras) was passing by when a dog was being ill-treated. ‘Stop,’ he said, ‘don’t hit it! It is the soul of a friend! I knew it when I heard its voice.'» He believed it impossible to ascertain the truth in matters of theology. «The certain truth there is no man who knows, nor ever shall be, about the gods and all the things whereof I speak. Yea, even if a man should chance to say something utterly right, still he himself knows it not—there is nowhere anything
but guessing.» *
Xenophanes has his place in the succession of rationalists who were opposed to the mystical tendencies of Pythagoras and others, but as an independent thinker he is not in the first rank.
The doctrine of Pythagoras, as we saw, is very difficult to disentangle from that of his disciples, and although Pythagoras himself is very early, the influence of his school is mainly subsequent to that of various other philosophers. The first of these to invent a theory which is still influential was Heraclitus, who flourished about 500 B.C. Of his life very little is known, except that he was an aristocratic citizen of Ephesus. He was chiefly famous in antiquity for his doctrine
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* Quoted from Edwyn Bevan, Stoics and Sceptics, Oxford, 1913, p. 121.
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that everything is in a state of flux, but this, as we shall see, is only one aspect of his metaphysics.
Heraclitus, though an Ionian, was not in the scientific tradition of the Milesians. * He was a mystic, but of a peculiar kind. He regarded fire as the fundamental substance; everything, like flame in a fire, is born by the death of something else. «Mortals are immortals, and immortals are mortals, the one living the other’s death and dying the other’s life.» There is unity in the world, but it is a unity formed by the combination of opposites. «All things come out of the one, and the one out of all things»; but the many have less reality than the one, which is God.
From what survives of his writings he does not appear as an amiable character. He was much addicted to contempt, and was the reverse of a democrat. Concerning his fellow-citizens he says: «The Ephesians would do well to hang themselves, every grown man of them, and leave the city to beardless lads; for they have cast out Hermodorus, the best man among them, saying: ‘We will have none who is best among us; if there be any such, let him be so elsewhere and among others.'» He speaks ill of all his eminent predecessors, with a single exception. «Homer should be turned out of the lists and whipped.» «Of all whose discourses I have heard, there is not one who attains to understanding that wisdom is apart from all.» «The learning of many things teacheth not understanding, else would it have taught Hesiod and Pythagoras, and again Xenophanes and Hecataeus.» «Pythagoras . . . claimed for his own wisdom what was but a knowledge of many things and an art of mischief.» The one exception to his condemnations is Teutamus, who is signalled out as «of more account than the rest.» When we inquire the reason for this praise, we find that Teutamus said «most men are bad.»
His contempt for mankind leads him to think that only force will compel them to act for their own good. He says: «Every beast is driven to the pasture with blows»; and again: «Asses would rather have straw than gold.»
As might be expected, Heraclitus believes in war. «War,» he says, «is the father of all and the king of all; and some he has made gods and some men, some bond and some free.» Again: «Homer was
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* Cornford, op. cit. (p. 184), emphasises this, I think rightly. Heraclitus is often misunderstood through being assimilated to other Ionians.
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wrong in saying: ‘Would that strife might perish from among gods and men!’ He did not see that he was praying for the destruction of the universe; for, if his prayer were heard, all things would pass away.» And yet again: «We must know that war is common to all and strife is justice, and that all things come into being and pass away through strife.»
His ethic is a kind of proud asceticism, very similar to Nietzsche’s. He regards the soul as a mixture of fire and water, the fire being noble and the water ignoble. The soul that has most fire he calls «dry.» «The dry soul is the wisest and best.» «It is pleasure to souls to become moist.» «A man, when he gets drunk, is led by a beardless lad, tripping, knowing not where he steps, having his soul moist.» «It is death to souls to become water.» «It is hard to fight with one’s heart’s desire. Whatever it wishes to get, it purchases at the cost of soul.» «It is not good for men to get all that they wish to get.» One may say that Heraclitus values power obtained through self-mastery, and despises the passions that distract men from their central ambitions.
The attitude of Heraclitus to the religions of his time, at any rate the Bacchic religion, is largely hostile, but not with the hostility of a scientific rationalist. He has his own religion, and in part interprets current theology to fit his doctrine, in part rejects it with considerable scorn. He has been called Bacchic (by Cornford), and regarded as an interpreter of the mysteries (by Pfleiderer). I do not think the relevant fragments bear out this view. He says, for example: «The mysteries practised among men are unholy mysteries.» This suggests that he had in mind possible mysteries that would not be «unholy,» but would be quite different from those that existed. He would have been a religious reformer, if he had not been too scornful of the vulgar to engage in propaganda.
The following are all the extant sayings of Heraclitus that bear on his attitude to the theology of his day.
The Lord whose is the oracle at Delphi neither utters nor hides his meaning, but shows it by a sign.
And the Sibyl, with raving lips uttering things mirthless, unbedizened, and unperfumed, reaches over a thousand years with her voice, thanks to the god in her.
Souls smell in Hades.
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Greater deaths win greater portions. (Those who die then become gods.)
Night-walkers, magicians, priests of Bacchus and priestesses of the wine-vat, mystery-mongers.
The mysteries practised among men are unholy mysteries.
And they pray to these images, as if one were to talk with a man’s house, knowing not what gods or heroes are.
For if it were not to Dionysus that they made a procession and sang the shameful phallic hymn, they would be acting most shamelessly. But Hades is the same as Dionysus in whose honour they go mad and keep the feast of the wine-vat.
They vainly purify themselves by defiling themselves with blood, just as if one who had stepped into the mud were to wash his feet in mud. Any man who marked him doing this, would deem him mad.
Heraclitus believed fire to be the primordial element, out of which everything else had arisen. Thales, the reader will remember,
