Hippolytus — Refutation (ch. 5)

In this manner Heraclitus assigns to the visible an equality of position and honour with the invisible, as if what was visible and what was invisible were confessedly some one thing. For he says, "An obscure harmony is preferable to an obvious one;

"and, "Whatsoever things are objects of vision, hearing, and intelligence," that is, of the (corporeal) organs —"these," he says, "I pre-eminently honour," not (on this occasion, though previously), having pre-eminently honoured invisible things. Therefore neither darkness, nor light, nor evil, nor good, Heraclitus affirms, is different, but one and the same thing. At all events, he censures Hesiod because he knew not day and night.

For day, he says, and night are one, expressing himself somehow thus: "The teacher, however, of a vast amount of information is Hesiod, and people suppose this poet to be possessed of an exceedingly large store of knowledge, and yet he did not know (the nature of) day and night, for they are one." As regards both what is good and what is bad, (they are, according to Heraclitus, likewise) one.

"Physicians, undoubtedly," says Heraclitus, "when they make incisions and cauterize, though in every respect they wickedly torture the sick, complain that they do not receive fitting remuneration from their patients, notwithstanding that they perform these salutary operations upon diseases." And both straight and twisted are, he says, the same. "The way is straight and curved of the carders of wool;

" and the circular movement of an instrument in the fuller's shop called "a screw" is straight and curved, for it revolves up and circularly at the same time. "One and the same," he says, " are, therefore, straight and curved." And upward and downward, he says, are one and the same. "The way up and the way down are the same." And he says that what is filthy and what is pure are one and the same, and what is drinkable and unfit for drink are one and the same.

"Sea," he says, "is water very pure and very foul, d