Page:Ferrier Works vol 2 1888 LECTURES IN GREEK PHILOSOPHY.pdf/172

Rh condition, to be a process, a becoming, that is, something always changing, and no one of its changes enduring or stopping during any appreciable interval of time. If the change could be arrested for a single instant, that would yield a moment of what might properly be called Being; but inasmuch as no change can be so arrested, the universe is a continual creation, a continually varying process, a Becoming.

11. You will obtain, I think, a distinct conception of Becoming as distinguished from Being, if you will attend to the following illustration. Take the case of a falling body, a stone dropped, let us say, at a distance of one hundred feet from the surface of the earth. It travels, you are aware, with a continually accelerated velocity. Natural philosophers can tell you how long it will take to reach the earth. By artificial contrivances they can calculate the ratio at which its velocity becomes increased. But no natural philosophy can calculate or can tell you what the particular velocity of the falling body is at any given moment, however short. The truth is, that the stone never has any particular, that is, any definite and constant velocity. Its velocity is always changing. It is not as if it had a certain constant velocity for the smallest conceivable time, the 1,000,000th part of a second, and then an increased constant velocity for another 1,000,000th part of a second, and so on. If that were the nature of its velocity, it would serve to illustrate our first and erroneous conception of