Page:Ferrier Works vol 2 1888 LECTURES IN GREEK PHILOSOPHY.pdf/197

142 conceive to be quite correct, although you ought to bear in mind, as some slight qualification of it, that the Eleatics, after having made the separation referred to, put away from them as unworthy of all consideration the conception of not-Being, and confined themselves exclusively to the conception of Being. They discarded not-Being as an overt principle of their philosophy. But from their having fixed Being as a conception by itself, which excluded not-Being, we may fairly infer that they fixed not-Being as a conception by itself, which excluded Being. But however this may be, it is certain that change cannot be explained, cannot even be admitted, on the principles of their philosophy.

34. It is otherwise in the system of Heraclitus. He begins, not with Being or the fixed, but with Becoming or the fluctuating. According to him, the principle, the beginning, the starting- point of all things is change, and therefore he is not under the necessity of explaining it, that is to say, of deducing it from anything anterior. He does explain it, or at least he throws out certain dark and brief words, by pondering over which we are at length able to explain it for ourselves. What, then, do we understand to be Heraclitus's conception of change or Becoming, a conception by means of which he avoids the perplexities in which the Eleatic thinkers got involved? His conception is, that Becoming is a unity which involves the two moments of Being and not-Being.