Campbell’s _Theaetetus_ (2nd ed.), p. 244. See above, p. 150, _n._
347. Bernays explained the phrase as referring to the _shape_ of the
bow and lyre, but this is much less likely. Wilamowitz’s
interpretation is substantially the same as Campbell’s. “Es ist mit
der Welt wie mit dem Bogen, den man auseinanderzieht, damit er
zusammenschnellt, wie mit der Saite, die man ihrer Spannung
entgegenziehen muss, damit sie klingt” (_Lesebuch_, ii. p. 129).
We know from Philo that Herakleitos supported his theory of the
attainment of harmony through strife by a multitude of examples; and, as
it happens, some of these can be recovered. There is a remarkable
agreement between a passage of this kind in the pseudo-Aristotelian
treatise, entitled _The Kosmos_, and the Hippokratean work to which we
have already referred. That the authors of both drew from the same
source, namely, Herakleitos, is probable in itself, and is made
practically certain by the fact that this agreement extends in part to
the _Letters of Herakleitos_, which, though spurious, were certainly
composed by some one who had access to the original work. The argument
was that men themselves act just in the same way as Nature, and it is
therefore surprising that they do not recognise the laws by which she
works. The painter produces his harmonious effects by the contrast of
colours, the musician by that of high and low notes. “If one were to
make all things alike, there would be no delight in them.” There are
many similar examples in the Hippokratean tract, some of which must
certainly come from Herakleitos; but it is not easy to separate them
from the later additions.[416]
Footnote 416:
See on all this Patin’s _Quellenstudien zu Heraklit_ (1881). The
sentence (Περὶ διαίτης, i. 5): καὶ τὰ μὲν πρήσσουσιν οὐκ οἴδασιν, ἃ δὲ
οὐ πρήσσουσι δοκέουσιν εἰδέναι· καὶ τὰ μὲν ὁρέουσιν οὐ γινώσκουσιν,
ἀλλ’ ὅμως αὐτοῖσι πάντα γίνεται ... καὶ ἃ βούλονται καὶ ἃ μὴ
βούλονται, has the true Herakleitean ring. This, too, can hardly have
had another author: “They trust to their eyes rather than to their
understanding, though their eyes are not fit to judge even of the
things that are seen. But I speak these things from understanding.”
These words are positively grotesque in the mouth of the medical
compiler; but we are accustomed to hear such things from the Ephesian.
Other examples which may be Herakleitean are the image of the two men
sawing wood—“one pushes, the other pulls”—and the illustration from
the art of writing.
[Sidenote: Correlation of opposites.]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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