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Heraclitus : (c.535-c.475 B.C), Greek philosopher of Ephesus. Sri Aurobindo: Heraclitus’ account of the cosmos is an evolution & involution out of his one eternal principle of Fire, – at once the one substance & the one force, – which he expresses in his figurative language as the upward & downward road. ‘The road up & down,’ he says, ‘is one & the same.’ Out of Fire, the radiant & energetic principle, air, water & earth proceed, – that is the procession of energy on its downward road; there is equally in the very tension of this process a force of potential return which would lead things backward to their source in the reverse order. In the balance of these two upward & downward forces resides the whole cosmic action; everything is a poise of contrary energies. The movement of life is like the back-returning of the bow, to which he compares it, an energy of traction & tension restraining an energy of release, every force of action compensated by a corresponding force of reaction. By the resistance of one to the other all the harmonies of existence are created. We have the same idea of an evolution of successive conditions of energy out of a primal substance-force in the Indian theory of Sāṅkhya. There indeed the system proposed is more complete & satisfying. It starts with the original or root energy, mūla-prakrti, which as the first substance, pradhāna, evolves by development & change into five successive principles. Ether, not fire, is the first principle, ignored by the Greeks, but rediscovered by modern Science. [SABCL 16:352]