SOURCE: B. A. G. Fuller, "Heracleitus," in History of Greek Philosophy: Thales to Democritus, Henry Holt and Company, 1923, pp. 118-42.

In the following excerpt, Fuller provides an overview of Heraclitus 's philosophical theories, focusing in particular on the doctrines of flux and wisdom.

Just a hundred years separate Heracleitus from Thales. Born at Ephesus some time in the latter half of the Sixth Century, he was in his prime about 500 B.C., and it is probable that he lived to see the battle of Marathon, and perhaps that of Salamis. Of his work we possess only fragments, and these are written in a style which already in antiquity had gained him the title of "the obscure." By birth an aristocrat of the aristocrats—the religious title and office of "king" seems to have been hereditary in his family—he was himself, a later biographer¹ tells us, an arrogant...