THE HELLENIC PERIOD 31 



vital fire, which is transformed into all things and which 

 is perpetually one and many at the same time. By 

 this, Heraclitus did not in any wise think to resolve a 

 logical problem and to affirm the identity of con- 

 tradictory propositions. This problem did not present 

 itself to his mind, it was on the ground of experience 

 that he based his affirmation of the union of contraries. 

 The changes which transform fire into water, then into 

 earth, form the up-road. The changes which inversely 

 transform earth into water, then into fire, are called 

 the down-road. Thus between the earth and the sky 

 there is a perpetual exchange of effluxes following a 

 double way, ascending and descending. From the 

 earth and sea arise effluxes, some dry, others moist. 

 The former are of an igneous nature, they are collected in 

 the hollow basins which constitute the heavenly bodies, 

 at the moment when these rise on the horizon ; they 

 then ignite to become extinguished when setting, giving 

 a residuum of water. The damp effluxes, by their 

 mixture with the dry ones, form our atmospheric air, 

 which extends to the moon, whence the water falls 

 back either as rain, or frozen in the form of snow. The 

 various proportions of the dry and moist effluxes 

 determine the vicissitude of days and nights, months 

 and seasons. In winter, for example, the sun in its 

 course is lower on the horizon, and it causes a greater 

 evaporation of the damp layers near the earth, hence 

 the aqueous element threatens to predominate and to 

 completely extinguish the sun, and this is why the sun 

 must return to the north to find there new sustenance 

 (Cicero, de natura deorum, III, 14) . 1 



According to Tannery, the basis of these conceptions 

 was borrowed from Egyptian solar myths, imported 

 into Asia Minor with the cult of Dionysus ; but this 

 is a debatable point. 2 So also is the signification to be 



1 8 Burnet, Aurore, p. 177. 



2 25 Tannery, Science hellene, pp. 177 and 179. 



