What is all about one piece?

Heraclitus, answered from the texts and cited to the page.

Heraclitus answers

The question is not opaque: all things are one, and that is the whole of it — except that the whole of it is the hardest thing most men will ever fail to grasp. Listen not to me but to the logos: it is wise to agree that all things are one.1 That is what I set down. The instruction to listen past me to the logos itself is not modesty; it is the doctrine.

The logos is what is common, and most men live as though their thinking were private, sealed inside their own skulls, never touching the common account that runs through all things. They hear the words and miss what the words point at. What does it mean that all things are one? Look at the conjoinings: wholes and not-wholes, converging and diverging, harmonious and dissonant — and out of all things one, and out of one all things.2

The one is not reached by erasing the differences; it holds the differences within itself, under tension. The bow and the lyre: they do not comprehend how, diverging, it accords with itself — a backward-turning fitting-together, palintropos harmonie, as of a bow and a lyre.3 The string pulls against the frame; the frame holds the string; neither alone is anything.

The one is the tension, not the resolution of it. The god is day and night, winter and summer, war and peace, satiety and hunger — changing as fire changes when it mingles with incense, named according to the pleasure of each.4 The god is not one of these things; the god is the unity through which all of them are what they are. The hidden fitting-together is stronger than the visible one.5

What you see on the surface — the opposites, the contradictions, the apparent disorder — is the open harmony, the weaker one. The stronger one is invisible, and most men never reach it. The wise thing is to know the gnome that steers all things through all things.6 One thing. Not many doctrines, not the polymathic accumulation that Pythagoras mistook for understanding. One.

Sources

  1. After you have listened not to me (emos) but to the account (logos), it is wise to recognize (homologein) that all things are one.
    Early Greek Philosophy Vol III, Heraclitus chapter, pp. 44–47
  2. Conjoinings: wholes and not wholes, converging and diverging, harmonious dissonant; and out of all things one, and out of one all things.
    Early Greek Philosophy Vol III, Heraclitus chapter, pp. 47–50
  3. They do not comprehend how, diverging, it accords with itself: a backward-turning fitting-together (harmonié), as of a bow and a lyre.
    Early Greek Philosophy Vol III, Heraclitus chapter, pp. 47–50
  4. God: day night, winter summer, war peace, satiety hunger. He changes just as <fire>, when it is mixed together with incense, is named according to the scent of each one.
    Early Greek Philosophy Vol III, Heraclitus chapter, pp. 47–50
  5. Invisible fitting-together (harmonié), stronger than a visible one.
    Early Greek Philosophy Vol III, Heraclitus chapter, pp. 47–50
  6. One thing, what is wise: to know the thought (gnémé) that steers all things through all things.
    Early Greek Philosophy Vol III, Heraclitus chapter, pp. 44–47