Now, if Herakleitos had himself held that this was the appointment of fate, would he have been likely to upbraid Homer for desiring so necessary a consummation?[411] Fourthly, we note that in fr. 20 it is _this_ world,[412] and not merely the “ever-living fire,” which is said to be eternal; and it appears also that its eternity depends upon the fact that it is always kindling and always going out in the same “measures,” or that an encroachment in one direction is compensated by a subsequent encroachment in the other. Lastly, Lassalle’s argument from the concluding sentence of the passage from the Περὶ διαίτης, quoted above, is really untouched by Zeller’s objection, that it cannot be Herakleitean because it implies that all things are fire and water. It does not imply this, but only that _man_, like the heavenly bodies, oscillates between fire and water; and that is just what Herakleitos taught. It does not appear either that the measures of earth varied at all. Now, in this passage we read that neither fire nor water can prevail completely, and a very good reason is given for this, a reason too which is in striking agreement with the other views of Herakleitos.[413] And, indeed, it is not easy to see how, in accordance with these views, the world could ever recover from a general conflagration if such a thing were to take place. The whole process depends, so far as we can see, on the fact that Surfeit is also Want, or, in other words, that an advance of fire increases the moist exhalation, while an advance of water deprives the fire of the power to cause evaporation. The conflagration, though it lasted but for a moment,[414] would destroy the opposite tension on which the rise of a new world depends, and then motion would become impossible. Footnote 410: If any one doubts that this is really the meaning of the “measures,” let him compare the use of the word by Diogenes of Apollonia, fr. 3. Footnote 411: This is just the argument which Plato uses in the _Phaedo_ (72 c) to prove the necessity of ἀνταπόδοσις, and the whole series of arguments in that passage is distinctly Herakleitean in character. Footnote 412: However we understand the term κόσμος here, the meaning is the same. Indeed, if we suppose with Bernays that it means “order,” the argument in the text will be all the stronger. In no sense of the word could a κόσμος survive the ἐκπύρωσις, and the Stoics accordingly said the κόσμος was φθαρτός. Footnote 413: