The metaphysics of Heraclitus are sufficiently dynamic to satisfy the most hustling of moderns:
«This world, which is the same for all, no one of gods or men has made; but it was ever, is now, and ever shall be an ever-living Fire, with measures kindling and measures going out.»
«The transformations of Fire are, first of all, sea; and half of the sea is earth, half whirlwind.»
In such a world, perpetual change was to be expected, and perpetual change was what Heraclitus believed in.
He had, however, another doctrine on which he set even more store than on the perpetual flux; this was the doctrine of the mingling of opposites. «Men do not know,» he says, «how what is at variance agrees with itself. It is an attunement of opposite tensions, like that of the bow and the lyre.» His belief in strife is connected with this
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theory, for in strife opposites combine to produce a motion which is a harmony. There is a unity in the world, but it is a unity resulting from diversity:
«Couples are things whole and things not whole, what is drawn together and what is drawn asunder, the harmonious and the discordant. The one is made up of all things, and all things issue from the one.»
Sometimes he speaks as if the unity were more fundamental than the diversity:
«Good and ill are one.»
«To God all things are fair and good and right, but men hold some things wrong and some right.»
«The way up and the way down is one and the same.»
«God is day and night, winter and summer, war and peace, surfeit and hunger; but he takes various shapes, just as fire, when it is mingled with spices, is named according to the savour of each.»
Nevertheless, there would be no unity if there were not opposites to combine: «it is the opposite which is good for us.»
This doctrine contains the germ of Hegel’s philosophy, which proceeds by a synthesising of opposites.
The metaphysics of Heraclitus, like that of Anaximander, is dominated by a conception of cosmic justice, which prevents the strife of opposites from ever issuing in the complete victory of either.
«All things are an exchange for Fire, and Fire for all things, even as wares for gold and gold for wares.»
«Fire lives the death of air, and air lives the death of fire; water lives the death of earth, earth that of water.»
«The sun will not overstep his measures; if he does, the Erinys, the handmaids of Justice, will find him out.»
«We must know that war is common to all, and strife is justice.»
Heraclitus repeatedly speaks of «God» as distinct from «the gods.» «The way of man has no wisdom, but that of God has. . . . Man is called a baby by God, even as a child by a man. . . . The wisest man is an ape compared to God, just as the most beautiful ape is ugly compared to man.»
God, no doubt, is the embodiment of cosmic justice.
The doctrine that everything is in a state of flux is the most famous of the opinions of Heraclitus, and the one most emphasised by his disciples, as described in Plato Theaetetus.
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«You cannot step twice into the same river; for fresh waters are ever flowing in upon you.» *
«The sun is new every day.»
His belief in universal change is commonly supposed to have been expressed in the phrase «all things are flowing,» but this is probably apocryphal, like Washington «Father, I cannot tell a lie» and Wellington’s «Up Guards and at ’em.» His works, like those of all the philosophers before Plato, are only known through quotations, largely made by Plato or Aristotle for the sake of refutation. When one thinks what would become of any modern philosopher if he were only known through the polemics of his rivals, one can see how admirable the pre-Socratics must have been, since even through the mist of malice spread by their enemies they still appear great. However this may be, Plato and Aristotle agree that Heraclitus taught that «nothing ever is, everything is becoming» ( Plato), and that «nothing steadfastly is» ( Aristotle).
I shall return to the consideration of this doctrine in connection with Plato, who is much concerned to refute it. For the present, I shall not investigate what philosophy has to say about it, but only what the poets have felt and the men of science have taught.
The search for something permanent is one of the deepest of the instincts leading men to philosophy. It is derived, no doubt, from love of home and desire for a refuge from danger; we find, accordingly, that it is most passionate in those whose lives are most exposed to catastrophe. Religion seeks permanence in two forms, God and immortality. In God is no variableness neither shadow of turning; the life after death is eternal and unchanging. The cheerfulness of the nineteenth century turned men against these static conceptions, and modern liberal theology believes that there is progress in heaven and evolution in the Godhead. But even in this conception there is something permanent, namely progress itself and its immanent goal. And a dose of disaster is likely to bring men’s hopes back to their older super-terrestrial forms: if life on earth is despaired of, it is only in heaven that peace can be sought.
The poets have lamented the power of Time to sweep away every object of their love.
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* But cf. «We step and do not step into the same rivers; we are, and are not.»
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Tme doth transfix the flourish set on youth, And delves the parallels in beauty’s brow, Feeds on the rarities of nature’s truth, And nothing stands but for his scythe to mow.
They generally add that their own verses are indestructible:
And yet to times in hope my verse shall stand, Praising thy worth, despite his cruel hand.
But this is only a conventional literary conceit.
Philosophically inclined mystics, unable to deny that whatever is in time is transitory, have invented a conception of eternity as not persistence through endless time, but existence outside the whole temporal process. Eternal life, according to some theologians, for example, Dean Inge, does not mean existence throughout every moment of future time, but a mode of being wholly independent of time, in which there is no before and after, and therefore no logical possibility of change. This view has been poetically expressed by Vaughan:
I saw Eternity the other night, Like a great ring of pure and endless light, All calm, as it was bright; And round beneath it, Time in hours, days, years, Driven by the spheres Like a vast shadow moved; in which the world And all her train were hurled.
Several of the most famous systems of philosophy have tried to state this conception in sober prose, as expressing what reason, patiently pursued, will ultimately compel us to believe.
Heraclitus himself, for all his belief in change, allowed something everlasting. The conception of eternity (as opposed to endless duration), which comes from Parmenides, is not to be found in Heraclitus, but in his philosophy the central fire never dies: the world «was ever, is now, and ever shall be, an ever-living Fire.» But fire is something continually changing, and its permanence is rather that of a process than that of a substance—though this view should not be attributed to Heraclitus.
Science, like philosophy, has sought to escape from the doctrine of perpetual flux by finding some permanent substratum amid chang-
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ing phenomena. Chemistry seemed to satisfy this desire. It was found that fire, which appears to destroy, only transmutes: elements are recombined, but each atom that existed before combustion still exists when the process is completed. Accordingly it was supposed that atoms are indestructible, and that all change in the physical world consists merely in re-arrangement of persistent elements. This view prevailed until the discovery of radio-activity, when it was found that atoms could disintegrate.
Nothing daunted, the physicists invented new and smaller units, called electrons and protons, out of which atoms were composed; and these units were supposed, for a few years, to have the indestructibility formerly attributed to atoms. Unfortunately it seemed that protons and electrons could meet and explode, forming, not new matter, but a wave of energy spreading through the universe with the velocity of light. Energy had to replace matter as what is permanent. But energy, unlike matter, is not a refinement of the common-sense notion of a «thing»; it is merely a characteristic of physical processes. It might be fancifully identified with the Heraclitean Fire, but it is the burning, not what burns. «What burns» has disappeared from modern physics.
Passing from the small to the large, astronomy no longer allows us to regard the heavenly bodies as everlasting. The planets came out of the sun, and the sun came out of a nebula. It has lasted some time, and will last some time longer; but sooner or later—probably in about a million million years—it will explode, destroying all the planets, and reverting to the condition of a widely-diffused gas. So at least the astronomers say; perhaps as the fatal day draws nearer they will find some mistake in their calculations.
The doctrine of the perpetual flux,
