Page:Ferrier Works vol 2 1888 LECTURES IN GREEK PHILOSOPHY.pdf/199

144 too fine for sense to approach the apprehension of. The changes manifest to the senses might more properly be called catastrophes than changes. Thus, when I place a piece of wax before the fire and it melts, that I perceive is a change from opaque solidity to transparent fluidity. But fluidity is the catastrophe; it is the precipitated result of an accumulated series of changes in the wax, which are no less than infinite. Each of these changes—or call them states, for at each change the wax was in a particular state—each of these states no sooner is than it is not. In appearing it disappears; but the disappearance is the appearance of a new state. The whole process is a series of vanishing fluxions, each of which in being ceases to be. But I have already illustrated this matter in so many ways that I must now desist. What you have to bear in mind as the gist of the Heraclitean solution of the problem of change is this, that the Being of every state in which a thing is, is the not-Being of that state; and that the not-Being of that state is the Being of another state; for that is what is meant by the unity of Being and not-Being, and by these two being elements of one conception, and not each of them a separate conception by itself. Viewed abstractly, the unity of these two contraries, Being and not-Being, may appear a paradox and an absurdity, but from the explanations and illustrations I have given you, perhaps you may be inclined to accept the doctrine as intelligible, if not as convincing. If you accept the doctrine as