History of Western Philosophy - Bertrand Russell [30]
His contempt for mankind leads him to think that only force will compel them to act for their own good. He says: 'Every beast is driven to the pasture with blows'; and again: 'Asses would rather have straw than gold.'
As might be expected, Heraclitus believes in war. 'War,' he says, 'is the father of all and the king of all; and some he has made gods and some men, some bond and some free.' Again: 'Homer was wrong in saying: "Would that strife might perish from among gods and men!" He did not see that he was praying for the destruction of the universe; for, if his prayer were heard, all things would pass away.' And yet again: 'We must know that war is common to all and strife is justice, and that all things come into being and pass away through strife.'
His ethic is a kind of proud asceticism, very similar to Nietzsche's. He regards the soul as a mixture of fire and water, the fire being noble and the water ignoble. The soul that has most fire he calls 'dry'. 'The dry soul is the wisest and best.' 'It is pleasure to souls to become moist.' 'A man, when he gets drunk, is led by a beardless lad, tripping, knowing not where he steps, having his soul moist.' 'It is death to souls to become water.' 'It is hard to fight with one's heart's desire. Whatever it wishes to get, it purchases at the cost of soul.' 'It is not good for men to get all that they wish to get.' One may say that Heraclitus values power obtained through self-mastery, and despises the passions that distract men from their central ambitions.
The attitude of Heraclitus to the religions of his time, at any rate the Bacchic religion, is largely hostile, but not with the hostility of a scientific rationalist. He has his own religion, and in part interprets current theology to fit his doctrine, in part rejects it with considerable scorn. He has been called Bacchic (by Cornford), and regarded as an interpreter of the mysteries (by Pfleiderer). I do not think the relevant fragments bear out this view. He says, for example: 'The mysteries practised among men are unholy mysteries.' This suggests that he had in mind possible mysteries that would not be 'unholy', but would be quite different from those that existed. He would have been a religious reformer, if he had not been too scornful of the vulgar to engage in propaganda.
The following are all the extant sayings of Heraclitus that bear on his attitude to the theology of his day.
The Lord whose is the oracle of Delphi neither utters nor hides his meaning, but shows it by a sign.
And the Sibyl, with raving lips uttering things mirthless, unbedizened and unperfumed, reaches over a thousand years with her voice, thanks to the god in her.
Souls smell in Hades.
Greater deaths win greater portions. (Those who die them become gods.)
Night-walkers, magicians, priests of Bacchus, and priestesses of the winevat, mystery-mongers.
The mysteries practised among men are unholy mysteries.
And they pray to these images, as if one were to talk with a man's house, knowing not what gods or heroes are.
For if it were not to Dionysus that they made a procession and sang the shameful phallic hymn, they would be acting most shamelessly. But Hades is the same as Dionysus in whose honour they go mad and keep the feast of the wine-vat.
They vainly purify themselves by defiling themselves with blood, just as if one who had stepped into the mud were to wash his feet in mud. Any man who marked him doing this, would deem him mad.
Heraclitus believed fire to be the primordial element, out of which everything else had arisen. Thales, the reader will remember, thought everything was made of water; Anaximenes thought air was the primitive element; Heraclitus preferred fire. At last Empedocles suggested a statesmanlike compromise by allowing four elements, earth, air, fire and water. The chemistry of the ancients stopped dead at this point. No further progress was made in this science until the Mohammedan alchemists embarked upon their search for the philosopher's stone, the elixir of life, and a method of transmuting