If people today from time to time are going to busy themselves rather too eagerly with the polis of the Greeks, they should not suppress this side of it; otherwise the concept of the polis easily becomes innocuous and sentimental. What is higher in rank is what is stronger. Thus Being, logos, as the gathered harmony, is not easily available for everyman at the same price, but is concealed, as opposed to that harmony which is always a mere equalizing, the elimination of tension, leveling: ἁρμονίη ἀφανὴς φανερῆς κρείττων, “the harmony that does not show itself (immediately and without further ado) is more powerful than the harmony that is (always) evident” (fragment 54).

Because Being is λόγος, ἁρμονία, ἀλήθεια, φύσις, φαίνεσθαι <λόγος, harmony, unconcealment, φύσις, self-showing>, it shows itself in a way that is anything but arbitrary. The true is not for everyman, but only for the strong. It is with a view to this inner superiority and concealment of Being that Heraclitus speaks that strange saying which, precisely because it seems to be so un-Greek, testifies to the essence of the Greek experience of the Being of beings: ἀλλ’ ὥσπερ σάρμα εἰκῆ κεχυμένων ὁ κάλλιστος κόσμος, “the most beautiful world is like a dungheap, cast down in shambles” (fragment 124).

Σάρμα is the opposing concept to λόγος, what is merely cast down as opposed to what stands in itself, the heap as opposed to collectedness, un-Being as opposed to Being.

The ordinary version of the philosophy of Heraclitus likes to sum it up in the saying πάντα ῥεῖ, “everything flows.” If this saying stems from Heraclitus at all, then it does not mean that everything is mere change that runs on and runs astray, pure inconstancy, but instead it means: the whole of beings in its Being is always thrown from one opposite to the other, thrown over here and over there—Being is the gatheredness of this conflicting unrest.