HEPILE'STION, a grammarian of Alexandria, lived about the middle of the 2nd century of the Christiau era. Ile is said to have instructed the emperor Verus, (Julius Capitolinus, c. 2.) Ile wrote a treatise on Greek metres, which was printed for the first time at Florence in 1520: but the best edition is by Gaisford, 8vo., Oxford, 1810, with the ' Chrestomathia ' of Proclue, reprinted at Leipzig, 1332. An English translation of this work, with prolegomena and notes by T. II. Barham, appeared at Cambridge in 1843.
HEPHeESTION. [ALEXANDER Ill.] HEltACEPTUS of Ephesus, surnamed the Naturalist, belongs to the dynamical school of the Ionian philosophy. He is said to have been born about D.C. 500, and, according to Aristotle, died in the sixtieth year of hie ago. The title ho assumed of 'self-taught' refutes at once tho claims of the various masters whom he is said to have had, and the distinguished position that be held in political life attests the wealth and lustre of his descent. The gloomy haughtiness and melancholy of his temperament led him to despise all human pursuits, and he expressed unqualified contempt as well for the political sagacity of his fellow-citizens as for the speculations of all other philosophers, as having mere learning and not wisdom for their object. Of his work On Nature' (repl olicrEces), the difficulty of which obtained for him the surname of 'the obscure,' many fragments are still extant, and exhibit a broken and concise style, hinting rather than explaining his opinions, which are often conveyed in mythical and half-oracular images. On this account he well compares himself to the Sibyl, "who," he says, "speaking with inspired mouth, smileless, inornate, and unperfumed, pierces through centuries by the power of the god." According to Heraclitus, the end of wisdom is to discover the ground and principle of all things. This principle, which is an eternal everliving unity, and pervades and is in all phenomena, he called fire. By this term Heraclitus understood, not the elemental fire or flame, which be held to be the excess of fire, but a warm and dry vapour ; which therefore, as air, is not distinct from the aced or vital energy, and which, as guiding and directing the mundane development, is endued with wisdom and intelligence. This supreme and perfect
force of life is obviously without limit to its activity; consequently nothing that it forma can remain fixed ; all is constantly in a process of formation. This he has thus figuratively expressed : " No one has ever been twico on the same stream." Nay, the passenger himself is without identity " On the same stream we do and we do not embark; for we are and we are not." The vitality of the rational fire has in it a tendency to contraries, whereby it is made to pass from gratification to want, and from want to gratification, and in fixed periods it alternates between aswifter and a slower flux. Now these opposite tendencies meet together in deter minate order, and by the inequality or equality of the forces occasion the phenomena of life and death. The quietude of death, however, is a mere semblance which exists only for tho senses of man. For man in hia folly forms a truth of his own, whereas it is only the universal reason that is really cognisant of the truth. Lastly, the rational principle which governs the whole moral and physical world is also the law of the individual ; whatever therefore is, is the wisest and the hest ; and "it is not for man's welfaro that his wishes should be fulfilled ; sickness makes health pleasant, as hunger does gratification, and labour rest." The physical doctrines of Heraclitos formed no inconsiderable portion of the eclectical system of the later Stoics, and in times still more recent there is much in the theories of Schelling and Hegel that presents a striking though general resemblance thereto.
The fragments of Heraclitus have been collected from Plutarch, Stobmus, Clemens of Alexandria, and Sextus Empiricus, and explained by Schleiermacher in Wolf and Buttman's Museum der Altherthum swissenschaft,' vol. i. See also Brandie's Handbuch der Geschichte der Oriechiech-Rom. Philoa, 1S35; and Ritter's History of Antient Philosophy,' Oxford, 1S37.