THE FRAGMENTS

OF THE WORK OF

HERACLITUS OF EPHESUS

ON NATURE

TRANSLATED FROM THE GREEK TEXT OF BYWATER,

WITH AN INTRODUCTION HISTORICAL AND CRITICAL

BY

George Thomas White

G. T. W. PATRICK, PH.D.

PROFESSOR OF PHILOSOPHY IN THE STATE UNIVERSITY OF IOWA

BALTIMORE
N. MURRAY

1889

[Reprinted from the AMERICAN JOURNAL OF PSYCHOLOGY, 1888.]

A THESIS ACCEPTED FOR THE DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY IN THE JOHNS HOPKINS UNIVERSITY, 1888.

PRESS OF ISAAC FRIEDENWALD,
BALTIMORE.

Οἱ δέοντες.

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, no 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,

They are to me for that I dream; 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 Teichmüller 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 Teichmüller, 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 was derived, according to Teichmüller, from Egypt; according to Lassalle, from India; according to Pfleiderer, from the Greek Mysteries. The Heraclitic flux, according to Pfleiderer, was consequent on his abstract theories; according to Teichmüller, his abstract theories resulted from his observation of the flux. Pfleiderer says that Heraclitus was an optimist; Gottlob