Note 278 — II. THE COLOSSIAN HERESY.

The exceptional activity of the forces of nature in these districts of Asia Minor may have directed the speculations of the Ionic school towards physics, and more especially towards cosmogony. In Heraclitus there is also a strong mystical element. But besides such broader affinities, I venture to call attention to special dicta of the two philosophers mentioned in the text, which curiously recall the tenets of the Judæo-Gnostic teachers. Thales declared (Diog. Laert. i. 27) τὸν κόσμον ἔμψυχον καὶ δαιμόνων πλήρη, or, as reported by Aristotle (de An. i. 5, p. 411), πάντα πλήρη θεῶν εἰναι. In a recorded saying of Heraclitus we have the very language of a Gnostic teacher; Clem. Alex. Strom. v. 13, p. 699, τὰ μὲν τῆς γνώσιος βάθη κρύπτειν ἀπιστίη ἀγαθή, καθ’ Ἡηράκλειτον· ἀπιστίη γὰρ διαφυγγάνει τὸ μὴ γινώσκεσθαι. See above pp. 77, 92.