Heraclitus B47 · B47

Diogenes Laertius (9.73) preserves this as a maxim of method. Let us not make random conjectures about the greatest things — <em>mē eikē</em>, 'not rashly, not at haphazard.'

The verb is the key. <em>Symballōmetha</em> is the middle of <em>symballō</em>, 'throw together' — and it is the standard word for reading omens, piecing a meaning out of scattered signs. Heraclitus, who said the god at Delphi 'neither speaks nor conceals but gives a sign' (B93), knows that the world does not hand over its sense plainly; it must be put together. The warning is against doing that carelessly. About small things a guess costs little; about 'the greatest things' — the <em>logos</em>, the divine, the order of the whole — a rash inference is exactly how men come to live inside their private dreams (B1, B17). Interpretation is unavoidable; only its recklessness is optional.

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