Method

Heracleitus acknowledged no master, declaring that he "inquired into himself, and learned everything from himself".
(Diogenes Laertius IX.5)

Heracleitus constantly speaks in metaphor. He realizes the difficulty for most people in encompassing the two apparently conflicting notions of opposition and unity, that the universe is "divisible and indivisible, generated and ungenerated, mortal and immortal". Indeed he is quoted as saying that few would ever understand that: "What is opposed is reconciled and from different things are born the most beautiful harmony".

Wherein lies the harmony of sounds created by a lyre, the effective action of a bow? - in the tension of opposition. Most men, Heracleitus says, donšt see "that in differing it agrees with itself, that there is a connection working in both directions, as in a bow or a lyre."