Fragment 1
τοῦ δὲ λόγου τοῦδ ἐόντος ἀεὶ ἀξύνετοι γίνονται ἄνθρωποι καὶ πρόσθεν ἢ ἀκοῦσαι καὶ ἀκούσαντες τὸ πρῶτον· γινομένων γὰρ πάντων κατὰ τὸν λόγον τόνδε ἀπείροισιν ἐοίκασι πειρώμενοι καὶ ἐπέων καὶ ἔργων τοιούτων ὁκοίων ἐγὼ διηγεῦμαι κατὰ φύσιν διαιρέων ἕκαστον καὶ φράζων ὅκως ἔχει· τοὺς δὲ ἄλλους ἀνθρώπους λανθάνει ὁκόσα ἐγερθέντες ποιοῦσιν ὅκωσπερ ὁκόσα εὕδοντες ἐπιλανθάνονται
Though this account is true evermore, yet men are as unable to understand it when they hear it for the first time as before they have heard it at all. For, though all things come to pass in accordance with this account, men seem as if they had no experience of them, when they make trial of words and deeds such as I set forth, dividing each thing according to its kind and showing how it is what it is. But other men know not what they are doing when awake, even as they forget what they do in sleep.
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Commentary
[ Hide commentary ]Two different sources say that this comes from the beginning of Heraclitus' book. For that reason, DK rightly put it as fragment 1. Most of the other fragments are short oral sayings, easy to remember. However, this fragment has a very literary style. This fragment and fragment 48 lead me to conclude that Heraclitus' work was a written book and not oral sayings.
Aristotle points to an ambiguity in the first line (Rhetoric 3.1407b11), noting that ἀεὶ ("forever") ambiguously could modify either ἐόντος ("is") or ἀξύνετοι ("not comprehending"). Some commentators think this was intentional, while others think that it is just unclear. Some translations try to capture the ambiguity: "Of this account which holds forever men prove uncomprehending" (Barnes), where "forever" could modify either how the λόγος ("account") holds or how long men prove uncomprehending of it.