Heraclitus B13 · B13

Pigs, Heraclitus notes, are happier in filth than in clean water. Like the donkeys of B9, the swine expose how relative our confident words 'clean' and 'foul' really are: to the pig, mud is the good bath and clear water the wrong one. What is <em>katharon</em>, pure, is pure only for a certain kind of creature.

But 'clean' is not a neutral word in these fragments, and that is the undercurrent. It belongs to the vocabulary of ritual purity — the same root as the vain blood-washing of B5, <em>kathairontai</em> — and to the mysteries of B14. Heraclitus keeps setting real cleanliness against the ceremonial kind, and here he lets an animal make the point: creatures rejoice in whatever suits their nature, and men, wallowing contentedly in rites they do not understand, are nearer the pig in the mire than they would like to think. The judgment of what is pure follows the judge; change the animal and the mud becomes the delight.

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