A History of Western Philosophy

"Two things are to be remembered: that a man whose opinions and theories are worth studying may be presumed to have had some intelligence, but that no man is likely to have arrived at complete and final truth on any subject whatever. When an intelligent man expresses a view which seems to us obviously absurd, we should not attempt to prove that it is somehow true, but we should try to understand how it ever came to seem true. This exercise of historical and psychological imagination at once enlarges the scope of our thinking, and helps us to realize how foolish many of our own cherished prejudices will seem to an age which has a different temper of mind."

"Heraclitus... regarded fire as the fundamental substance; everything, like flame in a fire, is born by the death of something else. ...There is unity in the world, but it is a unity formed by the combination of opposites. "All things come out of the one, and the one out of all things"; but the many have less reality than the one, which is God."

"From what survives of his writings he does not appear to be an amiable character. He was much addicted to contempt, and was the reverse of a democrat. ...His contempt for mankind leads him to think that only force will compel them to act for their own good. ...As might be expected, Heraclitus believes in war... "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.""

"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 base metals into gold."

"The metaphysics of Heraclitus are sufficiently dynamic to satisfy the most hustling of moderns: "This world, which is the same for all, no one of the gods or men has made; but it was ever, is now, and ever shall be an ever-living Fire, with measures kindling and measures going out.""

"His belief in strife is connected with this theory, for in strife opposites combine to produce a motion which is a harmony. There is a unity in the world, but it is a unity resulting from diversity... This doctrine contains a germ of Hegel's philosophy, which proceeds by a synthesizing of opposites. The metaphysics of Heraclitus, like that of Anaximander, is dominated by a conception of cosmic justice, which prevents the strife of the opposites from ever issuing in the complete victory of either."

"Heraclitus repeatedly speaks of "God" as distinct from "the gods." ...God, no doubt, is the embodiment of cosmic justice."

"When one thinks what would become of any modern philosopher if he were only known through the polemics of his rivals, one can see how admirable the pre-Socratics must have been, since even through the mist of malice spread by their enemies they still appear great."

"The conceptions of life and the world which we call "philosophical" are the product of two factors: one, inherited religious and ethical conceptions; the other, the sort of investigation which may be called "scientific," using this word in its broadest sense."