Page:Ferrier Works vol 2 1888 LECTURES IN GREEK PHILOSOPHY.pdf/187

132 thing is in a fixed definite state of being. We want it to change. Now it is obvious that it must change either per continuum, that is, with no intervals between the changes, or per saltum, that is, with intervals between the changes. If it changes per continuum we obtain a series of vanishing states, each of which disappears in appearing; is not, in the very moment that it is; each of these passes at once into another state, and forces us to say of it that in being it ceases to be. In this case, then, we are driven to have recourse to not-Being as an element essential to the conception of change. And we have been forced to regard them not as separate conceptions, but as the necessary moments of one indivisible conception. Suppose the changing states to be represented by the letters A, B, C, D, the state A appears, and in appearing disappears. But A's disappearance is the appearance of B, which in like manner disappears in the very act of appearing; but B's disappearance is the appearance of C, which no sooner appears than it vanishes in D, and so on. Now here the moments of Being and not-Being are inseparable; A's being is A's not-being, A's not-being is B's being, B's being is B's not-being, B's not-being is C's being, C's being is C's not-being, C's not-being is D's being, and so on. Each appearance is a disappearance, and each disappearance is a new appearance, and so the changes proceed, each vanishing in the other in such a way that we may say of them all, they are and are not. Such I believe to be the only true conception which