possessed his whole mind (§ 67), and we can only admit the possibility of that, if the evidence for it should prove irresistible. In the second place, such an interpretation destroys the whole point of Plato's contrast between Herakleitos and Empedokles (§ 68), which is just that, while Herakleitos said the One was always many, and the Many always one, Empedokles said the All was many and one by turns. Zeller's interpretation obliges us, then, to suppose that Herakleitos flatly contradicted his own discovery without noticing it, and that Plato, in discussing this very discovery, was also blind to the contradiction.[1]
Nor is there anything in Aristotle to set against Plato's statement. We have seen that the passage in which he speaks of him along with Empedokles as holding that the heavens were alternately in one condition and in another refers not to the world, but to fire, which Aristotle identified with the substance of his own "first heaven."[2] It is also quite consistent with our interpretation when he says that all things at one time or another become fire. This need not mean that they all become fire at the same time, but may be merely a statement of the undoubted Herakleitean doctrine of the upward and downward path.[3]
The earliest statements to the effect that Herakleitos
- ↑ In his fifth edition (p. 699) Zeller seems to have felt this last difficulty; for he said there: "It is a contradiction which he, and which probably Plato too (und den wahrscheinlich auch Plato) has not observed." This seems to me still less arguable. Plato may or may not be mistaken; but he makes the perfectly definite statement that Herakleitos says ἀεί, while Empedokles says ἐν μέρει. The Ionian Muses are called συντονώτεραι and the Sicilian μαλακώτεραι just because the latter "lowered the pitch" (ἐχάλασαν) of the doctrine that this is always so (τὸ ἀεὶ ταῦτα οὕτως ἔχειν).
- ↑ See above, p. 158, n. 1.
- ↑ Phys. Γ, 205 a 3 (Met. K, 10. 1067 a 4), ὥσπερ Ἡράκλειτός φησιν ἅπαντα γίνεσθαί ποτε πῦρ. Zeller translates this es werde alles dereinst zu Feuer werden; but that would require γενήσεσθαι. Nor is there anything in his suggestion that ἅπαντα ("not merely πάντα") implies that all things become fire at once. In Aristotle's day, there was no distinction of meaning between πᾶς and ἅπας. Of course, as Diels says, the present tense might be used of a "constant alternation of epochs" (Vors. 12 A 10 n.); but for the purpose of Zeller's argument, we want something which not only may but must mean that.
