Note 391 — Chapter III · HERAKLEITOS OF EPHESOS

We need not hesitate to ascribe to Herakleitos the view that the dead become guardian demons of the living; it appears already in Hesiod, Works and Days, 121, and the Orphic communities had popularised it. Rohde, Psyche (pp. 442 sqq.), refused to admit that Herakleitos believed the soul survived after death. Strictly speaking, it is no doubt an inconsistency; but I believe, with Zeller and Diels, that it is one of a kind we may well admit. Many thinkers have spoken of a personal immortality, though there was really no room for it in their systems. It is worthy of note in this connexion that the first argument which Plato uses to establish the doctrine of immortality in the Phaedo is just the Herakleitean parallelism of life and death with sleeping and waking.