Part 18

45. Men do not understand how that which draws apart agrees with itself; harmony lies in the bending back, as for instance of the bow and of the lyre.

V. Bernays, Rhein. Mus. vii. p. 94. Reading παλίντονος from fragment 56, we obtain the meaning ‘opposite tension’ more distinctly.

46. Opposition unites. From what draws apart results the most beautiful harmony. All things take place by strife.

Quoted by Aristotle as an illustration of the search for a deeper principle, more in accordance with nature.

47. Hidden harmony is better than manifest.

48. Let us not make rash conjectures about the greatest things.

49. Men who desire wisdom must be learners of very many things.

50. For woolcarders the straight and the crooked path is one and the same.

51. Asses would rather have refuse than gold.

52. The sea is the purest and the foulest water; it is drinkable and healthful for fishes; but for men it is unfit to drink and hurtful.

Quoted by Hippolytos as an example of Herakleitos’ identification of opposites.

53-54. Swine like to wash in the mire; barnyard fowls in the dust.

55. Every beast is tended by blows.

Cf. Zeller, i. p. 724: ‘Every creature feeds on earth.’

(56. Identical with 45.)

57. Good and bad are the same.

58. (Good and bad are one; at any rate, as Herakleitos says) physicians, who cut and burn and in every way torment the sick, complain that they do not receive any adequate recompense from them.

59. Thou shouldst unite things whole and things not whole, that which tends to unite and that which tends to separate, the harmonious and the discordant; from all things arises the one, and from the one all things.

60. They would not have known the name of justice, were it not for these things.

According to the context in Clement ‘these things’ refers to injustice.

61. (God, ordering things as they ought to be, perfects all things in the harmony of the whole, as Herakleitos says that) for god all things are fair and good and just, but men suppose that some are unjust and others just.

Cf. Hippocr. de Diaeta (Bernays, Herakl. 22; RP 37 c) Accordingly the arrangements (laws) which men have made are never constant, either when they are right, or when they are not right; but the arrangements the gods have made are always right, both those which are right and those which are not right; so great is the difference between them.

62. Men should know that war is general and that justice is strife; all things arise and [pass away] through strife.

63. For they are absolutely destined....

64. All the things we see when awake are death, and all the things we see when asleep are sleep.

For various interpretations, v. Teichmüller, i. 97 sq.; Zeller, i. 715; Patin, Einheitslehre, 19.

65. v. 19.

66. The name of the bow is life, but its work is death.