HERACLEITUS - THE SEARCH

HERACLEITUS
THE RIDDLER

The Search for Truth

Wherein lies the nature and unity of the universe? What and how can we hope to learn of these? For many the answer was - the gods created it that way and only the priests can divine their nature and wishes. Why search further? Heracleitus looked and thought beyond the limited horizons of his immediate world. Heracleitus held that things are not as we perceive them. The answers lay not within the confines of the city walls, not within the narrow realms of traditional Olympian religion - his system of thought encompassed the entire cosmos.

"The world, the same for all, neither any god nor any made; but it was always and is and will be, fire ever-living, kindling in measures and being extinguished in measures."
B30 quoted in Clement "Miscellanies" V xiv 104.2

The Greek gods were believed to both look and act like humans. The only difference was that the gods were immortal. This figure from a Greek vase shows Zeus, head of the gods, with his weapon, the thunderbolt. The vase shows him chasing a woman. Later Greek moral philosophers like Socrates and Plato rejected stories which saw the gods behaving immorally.