Περὶ διαίτης, i. 3 (see above, p. 167, _n._ 383, οὐδέτερον γὰρ κρατῆσαι παντελῶς δύναται διὰ τάδε· τό <τε> πῦρ ἐπεξιὸν ἐπὶ τὸ ἔσχατον τοῦ ὕδατος ἐπιλείπει ἡ τροφή· ἀποτρέπεται οὖν ὅθεν μέλλει τρέφεσθαι· τὸ ὕδωρ τε ἐπεξιὸν τοῦ πυρὸς ἐπὶ τὸ ἔσχατον, ἐπιλείπει ἡ κίνησις· ἵσταται οὖν ἐν τούτῳ, ὅταν δὲ στῇ, οὐκέτι ἐγκρατές ἐστιν, ἀλλ’ ἤδη τῷ ἐμπίπτοντι πυρὶ ἐς τῆν τροφὴν καταναλίσκεται· οὐδέτερον δὲ διὰ ταῦτα δύναται κρατῆσαι παντελῶς, εἰ δέ ποτε κρατηθείη καὶ ὁπότερον, οὐδὲν ἂν εἴη τῶν νῦν ἐόντων ὥσπερ ἔχει νῦν· οὕτω δὲ ἐχόντων ἀεὶ ἔσται τὰ αὐτὰ καὶ οὐδέτερον οὐδαμὰ ἐπιλείψει. Footnote 414: In his note on fr. 66 (= 26 Byw.), Diels seeks to minimise the difficulty of the ἐκπύρωσις by saying that it is only a little one, and can last but a moment; but the contradiction noted above remains all the same. Diels holds that Herakleitos was “dark only in form,” and that “he himself was perfectly clear as to the sense and scope of his ideas” (_Herakleitos_, p. i.). To which I would add that he was probably called “the Dark” just because the Stoics sometimes found it hard to read their own ideas into his words. [Sidenote: Strife and “harmony.”] 79. We are now in a position to understand more clearly the law of strife or opposition which manifests itself in the “upward and downward path.” At any given moment, each of the three forms of matter, Fire, Water, and Earth, is made up of two equal portions,—subject, of course, to the oscillation described above,—one of which is taking the upward and the other the downward path. Now, it is just the fact that the two halves of everything are being “drawn in opposite directions,” this “opposite tension,” that “keeps things together,” and maintains them in an equilibrium which can only be disturbed temporarily and within certain limits. It thus forms the “hidden attunement” of the universe (fr. 47), though, in another aspect of it, it is Strife. Bernays has pointed out that the word ἁρμονία meant originally “structure,” and the illustration of the bow and the lyre shows that this idea was present. On the other hand, that taken from the concord of high and low notes shows that the musical sense of the word, namely, an octave, was not wholly absent. As to the “bow and the lyre” (fr. 45), I think that Professor Campbell has best brought out the point of the simile. “As the arrow leaves the string,” he says, “the hands are pulling opposite ways to each other, and to the different parts of the bow (cf. Plato, _Rep._ 4. 439); and the sweet note of the lyre is due to a similar tension and retention. The secret of the universe is the same.”[415] War, then, is the father and king of all things, in the world as in human society (fr. 44); and Homer’s wish that strife might cease was really a prayer for the destruction of the world (fr. 43). Footnote 415: