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Hence, in so far as man is wise, it is because his spirit is kindled by
union with the universal spirit; but there is a baser, or, as Heraclitus
termed it, a moister element also in him, which is the element of unreason,
as in a drunken man. And thus the trustworthiness or otherwise of the
senses, as the channels of communication with the divine, depends on the
dryness or moistness,—or, as we should express it, using, after
all, only another metaphor,—on the elevation or baseness of
the spirit that is within. To those whose souls are base and barbarous, the
eternal movement, the living fire, is invisible; and thus what they do see
is nothing but death. Immersed in the mere appearances of things and their
supposed stability, they, whether sleeping or waking, behold only dead
forms; their spirits are dead.
For the guidance of life there is no law but the common sense, which is the
union of those fragmentary perceptions of eternal law, which individual men
attain, in so far as their spirits are dry and pure. Of absolute knowledge
human nature is not capable, but only the Divine. To the Eternal, therefore,
alone all things are good and beautiful and just, because to Him alone do
things appear in their totality. To the human partial reason some things are
unjust and others just. Hence life, by reason of the limitations involved in
it, he sometimes spoke of as the death of the soul, and death as the renewal
of its life. And so, in the great events of man’s life and in the small, as
in the mighty circle of the heavens, good and evil, life and death, growth
and decay, are but the systole and diastole, the outward and inward
pulsation, of an eternal good, an eternal harmony. Day and night, winter and
summer, war and peace, satiety and hunger—each conditions the other, all are
part of God. It is sickness that makes health good and sweet, hunger that
gives its pleasure to feeding, weariness that makes sleep a good.
A History of Greek Philosophy /
THE SCHOOL OF MILETUS /
HERACLITUS
