Page:Ferrier Works vol 2 1888 LECTURES IN GREEK PHILOSOPHY.pdf/175

120 into a third before it has attained to any degree of fixedness or duration. The eye, indeed, seems to arrest the fleeting pageant, and to give it some continuance. But the senses, says Heraclitus, are very indifferent witnesses of the truth. Reason refuses to lay an arrestment on any period of the passing scene, or to declare that it is, because in the very act of being, it is not; it has given place to something else. It is a series of fleeting colours, no one of which is, because each of them continually vanishes in another.

14. The sunrise furnishes another illustration. The dawn steals gradually over the earth and sky; and never at any moment can we say that the degree of light is definite and fixed. It is continually changing. It is continually becoming stronger and stronger: and yet at no instant can we say or think, here one degree of clearness ends, and here a higher degree of clearness begins. In truth, none of the changes have either any end or any beginning, so imperceptibly are they fined away into each other. Neither here nor in the case of the sunset, nor in that of the falling stone, can we strike in at any point and say, here one change terminates, and here another change commences. The whole series is so close and continuous that the end of one change is the beginning of another change. The end of one change seems to be what Heraclitus calls the , the road upwards; and the beginning of another change is what he calls the , the road downwards; and hence he says that these