Death and birth of the elements
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ψυχῇσιν θάνατος ὕδωρ γενέσθαι, ὕδατι δὲ θάνατος γῆν γενέσθαι, ἐκ γῆς δὲ ὕδωρ γίνεται, ἐξ ὕδατος δὲ ψυχή
For souls it is death to become water, and for water death to become earth; but out of earth comes water, and out of water, soul.
Preserved by Clement of Alexandria (Stromateis). Heraclitus threads the soul into the same cycle as water and earth: each element's death is the next one's birth. The wording makes descent sound like loss and ascent like gain, then shows they are one road — the claim B60 states outright.
Heraclitus threads soul into the same exchange as water and earth, and the effect is startling: the ψυχή is not a separate immortal thing here but one station on a cycle of matter. For souls it is death to become water, for water death to become earth — and then the road runs back up: from earth, water; from water, soul. Every 'death' on the way down is a birth on the way up. Nothing is destroyed; a thing's ending is only its turning into the next thing.
Notice the asymmetry in the wording. The downward steps are each named θάνατος, 'death'; the upward steps are stated flatly as coming-to-be. Heraclitus makes descent sound like loss and ascent like gain, then lets you see they are one road travelled in opposite directions — exactly the claim of B60, that the way up and the way down are the same. For a Greek, ψυχή first meant breath, the life that leaves at death (Homer's shades are ψυχαί), so to say a soul can 'die into water' is already a provocation: the soul is not exempt from the cosmic fire's turnings but caught in them, drier or wetter, nearer flame or nearer earth.
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