Page:Early Greek philosophy by John Burnet, 3rd edition, 1920.djvu/165

Rh fire and, water" in connexion with day and night and the courses of the sun and moon. In fr. 26, again, we read of fire "advancing," and all these things seem to be closely connected. We must therefore try to see whether there is anything in the remaining fragments that bears on the subject.

73. In studying this alternate advance of fire and water, it will be convenient to start with the microcosm. We have more definite information about the two exhalations in man than about the analogous processes in the world at large, and it would seem that Herakleitos himself explained the world by man rather than man by the world. Aristotle implies that soul is identical with the dry exhalation, and this is confirmed by the fragments. Man is made up of three things, fire, water, and earth. But, just as in the macrocosm fire is identified with the one wisdom, so in the microcosm the fire alone is conscious. When it has left the body, the remainder, the mere earth and water, is altogether worthless (fr. 85). Of course, the fire which animates man is subject to the "upward and, downward path," just as much as the fire of the world. The Περὶ διαίτης has preserved the obviously Herakleitean sentence: "All things are passing, both human and divine, upwards and downwards by exchanges." We are just as much in perpetual flux as anything else in the world. We are and are not the same for two consecutive instants (fr. 81). The fire in us is perpetually becoming water, and the water earth; but, as