HERACLITUS.
1. It may help to keep distinctly before your minds the chief characteristic or distinction of the various systems we have been considering, if we designate by one word the principle for which each of them contends. They are all searching for the common quality or feature, what we call the universal, in all things, something which is true for all minds. If they can attain to this, they conceive that they have reached the ultimately real, the absolutely true. According to Thales, then, water was the universal; according to Anaximander, infinite or indefinite matter was the universal; air was the universal of Anaximenes. According to the Pythagoreans, number was the universal principle; while, with the Eleatics, the universal in all things was being.
2. We now come to a philosopher who inaugurated a new era in speculation. Heraclitus comes upon the scene; and the universal for which he contends is movement, change. This principle is different from all those which have been enumerated. It is indeed
