Page:Ferrier Works vol 2 1888 LECTURES IN GREEK PHILOSOPHY.pdf/171

116 We may be assured, then, that this, our ordinary conception of Becoming (which, in truth, is no adequate conception of it at all, because it confounds Being and Becoming)—we may be assured that this was not the conception entertained by Heraclitus and the other philosophers of antiquity. Their idea of Becoming was not the idea of a series of consecutive states of Being.

10. To get at the conception of Becoming, as entertained by Heraclitus and others, we must not identify, but we rather must contrast it, with that of Being. I do not say that the conception of Becoming excludes that of Being, but it is certainly to some extent opposed to it. What then is the principal feature in the conception of Being? By ascertaining this we shall be able to declare what its opposite is, and thus we shall reach the proper conception of Becoming. The principal feature in the conception of Being is rest, fixedness. Now, the opposite of this is the principal feature in the conception of Becoming. It is unrest, unfixedness. A thing never rests at all in any of the changing states into which it is thrown. It is in the state and out of it in a shorter time than any calculus can measure. In fact, the universe and all that it contains are undergoing a continuous change in which there is no pause; and therefore, since pause or rest is necessary to the conception of Being, the universe cannot be said to be in a state of Being or fixedness, but in a continually fluxional