Sea — purest and foulest water
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θάλασσα ὕδωρ καθαρώτατον καὶ μιαρώτατον, ἰχθύσι μὲν πότιμον καὶ σωτήριον, ἀνθρώποις δὲ ἄποτον καὶ ὀλέθριον
Sea is the purest and foulest water: for fish drinkable and life-saving, for men undrinkable and deadly.
Preserved by Hippolytus (Refutation IX). Heraclitus points at the sea: the same water is at once 'purest and foulest.' For fish it is drinkable and life-sustaining; for human beings it is undrinkable and deadly. One thing, opposite values — depending only on who meets it.
One body of water, two verdicts. The sea that a fish breathes and lives in would kill a man who drank it, so 'purest' and 'foulest' are both true of the identical stuff — the difference is entirely in who meets it. Heraclitus chooses the loaded word <em>miaros</em>, 'polluted,' the term for ritual defilement, to make the reversal as stark as possible against 'purest.' The opposites do not cancel; they coexist, indexed to a standpoint.
This is the perspectival face of the unity of opposites (compare the doctors of B58, the road of B60). Value is not a property the sea owns but a relation it enters. The lesson cuts against the human habit — attacked all through the fragments — of mistaking our own standpoint for the measure of things: 'to God all things are fair and good and just, but men have supposed some things unjust and others just' (B102). The sea does not change; only the drinker does.
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