Philosophumena; or, The refutation of all heresies, Volume II
David Hume · en
10. Thus Heraclitus supposes the apparent to have an equal lot and
honour with the unapparent, as if the apparent and the unapparent were
admittedly one. “For,” he says, “an unapparent harmony is better than
an apparent,” and “Whatever sight, hearing [and] learning [these are
the organs] can receive, this, he says, I honour above all,” thus not
honouring by preference the unapparent. And so Heraclitus says that
neither darkness nor light, nor good nor evil are different,[18] but
are one and the same. Therefore he blames Hesiod that he did not know
Day and Night, for Day and Night, he says, are one, speaking somehow
like this: “Hesiod is the teacher of most things, and they feel sure
that he knew most things, who did not [however] know Day and Night. For
they are one.” And [as to] good and evil:--“Now the surgeons,” says
Heraclitus, “usually cut, burn, and in every way torture the sick,
and complain that they receive from them no fitting reward for their
labours, although they do these good works on [Sidenote: p. 431.] the
diseases.” And both straight and crooked, he says, are the same. “The
way of wool-carders, he says, is both straight and crooked, [because]
the revolution of the tool called _cochleus_[19] is both straight and
crooked; for it revolves and moves upwards at the same time. It is,
he says, one and the same.” And upward and downward are, he says, one
and the same: “The way up and down is one and the same.” And he says
that the polluted and the pure are one and the same, and the drinkable
and the undrinkable also. “The sea,” he says, “is at once the purest
and the most polluted water, for to fish it is drinkable and salutary,
but to man undrinkable and hurtful.”[20] And in the same way, he says,
admittedly the immortal is mortal and the mortal immortal, in such
words as these: “Deathless are mortals, and mortals are deathless, when
the living take death from these, and the dead life from those.” But
he speaks here of the resurrection of this visible flesh [Sidenote: p.
432.] wherein we have been born. And he knows God to be the cause of
this resurrection, saying thus: “Those here will rise again and will
become the busy guardians of living and dead.” And he says also that
the judgment of the ordered world and of all therein will be by fire,
speaking thus: “Thunder governs all things,” that is, it corrects them,
meaning by “thunder” the everlasting fire. But he says also that this
fire is discerning and the cause of the government of the universals,
and he calls it Need[21] and Satiety. Now Need is according to him the
Ordering [of the world],[22] but Satiety the Ecpyrosis. For “Fire,” he
says, “coming suddenly will judge and seize all things.”[23]