His difficult book "Concerning Nature" was even then rare, for people had long since satisfied themselves by the quotation of certain brilliant, isolated, oracles only, out of what was at best a taxing kind of lore.

But the difficulty of the early Greek prose did but spur the curiosity of Marius; the writer, the superior clearness of whose intellectual view had so sequestered him from other men, who had had so little joy of that superiority, being avowedly exacting as to the amount of devout attention he required from the student.

"The many," he said, always thus emphasising the difference between the many and the few, are "like people heavy with wine," "led by children," "knowing not whither they go;" and yet, "much learning doth not make wise;" and again, "the ass, after all, would have his thistles rather than fine gold." Heraclitus, indeed, had not under-rated the difficulty for "the many" of the paradox with which his doctrine begins, and the due reception of which must involve a denial of habitual impressions, as the necessary first step in the way of truth.

His philosophy had been developed in conscious, outspoken opposition to the current mode of thought, as a matter requiring some exceptional loyalty to pure reason and its "dry light." Men are subject to an illusion, he protests, regarding matters apparent to sense.

[129] What the uncorrected sense gives was a false impression of permanence or fixity in things, which have really changed their nature in the very moment in which we see and touch them.