Page 15 - GALIET THE RIVERING WATERS: Heraclitus IV

plague and death and who dwells, part-time at Delphi, along Dionysus.33
This sense of Apollonian order and unity are symbolic of justice: “the sun will not overstep its measures, or else the Furies, the allies of Justice, will find it out.”34 They are also consequence of the universality of logos: “it is wise for those who listen not to me but to the principle* (λογου) to agree in principle that everything is one given that... all things happen according to the logos,” which, according to Heraclitus, “men do not comprehend before or after having heard it.”35 Heraclitus’ opposites and contrasts are governed by a law. In this manner, not only opposites are ordered, but also change. Everything flows and changes, but not in any manner. Things change according to an order, which can be compared to fire, which is at once unstable and permanent, or properly said, the unstable in the permanent. This is why, Heraclitus posits, in a beautiful and most revealing fragment that, “order was not made by god or man. It always was and is and shall be an ever-living fire,
33 This is yet another contrast possibly hinted in Heraclitus, which Nietzsche eventually highlights in The Birth of Tragedy regarding the tension between the Apollonian and Dionysian will. Both oppose the dream and the
real, nomos and phusis, logos and mythos, plastic arts and dithyramb, respectively. Like Apollo, Heraclitus favoured logos over mythos. Xenophanes and Plato are also of this tradition. Homer, Parmenides and Empedocles, however, favour mythos over logos.
34 F 43 Plutarch, On Exile 604a10-12 de Lacy/Einarson. 43
35 F 10 Hippolytus, Refutation of All Heresies 9.9.1.3-4 Marcovich. 39 *see page 187 (194) to see ‘logou’ in The Presocratic Philosophers. G.S. Kirk, Raven and Schofield. In this translation, Heraclitus adds: “for although all things happen according to this Logos, men are like people of no experience...”
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