Page:Early Greek philosophy by John Burnet, 3rd edition, 1920.djvu/158

144 put in another way. The use of the word ἁρμονίη suggests that Herakleitos had come under the influence of his older contemporary to some extent.

Plato clearly states that this was the central thought of Herakleitos. In the Sophist (242 d), the Eleatic stranger, after explaining how the Eleatics maintained that what we call many is really one, proceeds

In this passage the Ionian Muses stand, of course, for Herakleitos, and the Sicilian for Empedokles. According to Plato, then, Herakleitos taught that reality was at once many and one. This was not meant as a logical principle. The identity which Herakleitos explains as consisting in difference is just that of the primary substance in all its manifestations. This identity had been realised already by the Milesians, but they had found a difficulty in the difference. Anaximander had treated the strife of opposites as an "injustice," and what Herakleitos set himself to