Heraclitus B78 · B78

The human bears no judgment, the divine does

ἦθος γὰρ ἀνθρώπειον μὲν οὐκ ἔχει γνώμας, θεῖον δὲ ἔχει

For the human disposition has no true judgments, but the divine one does.

Word by word

ἦθοςêthoscharacterγὰρgàrforἀνθρώπειονanthrṓpeionhumanμὲνmènon the one handοὐκouknotἔχειécheihasγνώμαςgnṓmasjudgments,θεῖονtheîonthe divineδὲdèbutἔχειécheihas

The setting

Preserved by Origen (Against Celsus 6.12), who cites it alongside B79 to argue that human wisdom is worthless beside God's. Heraclitus contrasts human ἦθος, which holds no true insight, with the divine, which does.

A note on this passage

The fragment turns on gnōmai — settled insights, the right judgments about how things are. Human ēthos, our character or bent, simply does not hold them; the divine does. Read one way this is humbling arithmetic: measured against god, the wisest man is what B79 calls an infant. Read against the rest of Heraclitus it is sharper, because he insists there is a single gnōmē that steers all things (B41), the plan by which the logos orders the world — and human character, left to itself, is blind to it.

What is withheld matters. Heraclitus does not say humans can have no insight, only that human ēthos as such does not possess it: judgment is not native to us, it has to be won against our own grain, by listening to the common logos rather than to private opinion (B2). Origen quotes the line to shame human pride before God, and the words bear it; but for Heraclitus the gap is not unbridgeable so much as unearned — the divine judgment is there to be shared, if one wakes to it instead of sleeping in one's own character.

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Heraclitus B78 — The Great Library Project interlinear edition · greatlibraryproject.com/book/heraclitus/B78/