The fragments of the work of Heraclitus of Ephesus on nature. Translated from the Greek text of Bywater, with an introduction historical and critical.

Baltimore, MD, N. Murray, 1889. 8vo (24.3 x 15.3 cm). x, 131 pp. Original printed wrappers. = Rare edition of this Ancient Greek philosophical work. Heraclitus of Ephesus (ca. 535 -475 BC) '.was a pre-Socratic Ionian Greek philosopher, and a native of the city of Ephesus, in modern-day Turkey and then part of the Persian Empire. Due to the oracular and paradoxical nature of his philosophy, and his fondness for word play, he was called "The Obscure" even in antiquity. He wrote a single work, On Nature, but the obscurity is made worse by its remaining only in fragments. His cryptic utterances have been the subject of numerous interpretations. He has been seen variously as a "material monist or a process philosopher; a scientific cosmologist, a metaphysician, or mainly a religious thinker; an empiricist, a rationalist, or a mystic; a conventional thinker or a revolutionary; a developer of logic or one who denied the law of non-contradiction; the first genuine philosopher or an anti-intellectual obscurantist. . He regarded himself as self-taught and a pioneer of wisdom. He was considered a misanthrope given to depression; he was also called "the weeping philosopher"' (Wikipedia). Small library stamp in the top margin of the front wrapper. Paper brittle. Front wrapper cut below printed surface, first two leaves cut, without loss.