From the Beginning to Plato

98 HERACLITUS
This is a connection or harmony among things that are not related by empirically
observed continuity of material entities, the sort of continuity that we might
deduce from accumulating data and predicting similar patterns. It is a connection
that is context-bound, producing a varied significance of things that is not
evidently predictable but derives from an obscure relation among words and
things.
In these circumstances the senses are not the most obvious tools for achieving
an understanding of what matters; or rather the senses alone are not adequate for
the job. The testimony of the senses can be positively misleading unless we can
grasp the significance of the evidence they give. This seems to be the claim
expressed in the curious saying
The eyes and ears of those who have foreign souls are bad witnesses for
people.
(B107) 88
A foreign (‘barbarian’) soul is one who cannot understand the message; perhaps
one who cannot grasp the logos, the lingo, in which the sense perceptions are
coded. This person, as it were, hears the sounds, but misinterprets what is said, so
that the witness that is given turns out to be a false testimony, leading the hearer
to believe a false account rather than the true logos that is actually encoded in the
message of the senses when correctly understood. The message is some kind of
riddle which, in the imagery of another fragment, cannot be understood by the
blind:
People are taken in as regards knowledge of things that are apparent, like
Homer, who was wiser than all the Greeks. For some children killing lice
fooled him by saying: the ones we saw and caught, those we left behind;
but the ones we neither saw nor caught, those we are taking with us.
(B56) 89
The language of this riddle is rich with epistemological significance. Homer,
who was traditionally blind, unfamiliar with what is apparent to the senses, is
also blind to the significance of the riddle, because he cannot see that it is lice
that the children are busy catching. But other people are also blind to the
significance of the riddle, which is that the superficial evidence, that we see and
grasp, is worthless and can be discarded; while the less obvious significance,
what we carry with us in the internal structure of our language, our rituals, and
the shared customs that we use but do not observe, is what is worth grasping, if
only we could.