"Homer was wrong," wrote Heracleitus of Ephesus. "Homer was wrong in saying: 'Would that strife might perish from among gods and men!' He did not see that he was praying for the destruction of the universe; for if his prayer were heard, all things would pass away." These are the words on which the superhumanists should meditate. Aspiring toward a consistent perfection, they are aspiring toward annihilation. The Hindus had the wit to see and the courage to proclaim the fact; Nirvana, the goal of their striving, is nothingness. Wherever life exists, there also is inconsistency, division, strife.
Aldous Huxley, "Spinoza's Worm," Do What You Will (1928)
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| 'Herakleitos', in John Burnet, Early Greek Philosophy (1892), see Fragment 43. |
Much that I say here is in Herakleitos though the form is different. "Homer was wrong in saying 'would that strife might perish from among gods and men!' He did not see that he was praying for the destruction of the universe; for if his prayer were heard, all things would pass away." & again "War is the father of all ; & some he has made gods & some men, some bond & some free."
W. B. Yeats, drafts of A Vision B, late 1920s, in Rapallo Notebook E (NLI 13,582)
conflict... creates all life
(AVB 72n, CW14 53n)
My instructors identify consciousness with conflict....
(AVB 214, CW14 158)
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