Page:Ferrier Works vol 2 1888 LECTURES IN GREEK PHILOSOPHY.pdf/178

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HERACLITUS.
123

is merely slow change, just as they might mistake slow motion for rest. Reason alone reveals to us the truth; and this declares, as the truth for all intellect, that the universe is a process of Becoming, and not a system of Being.

17. From these remarks you may perceive in what respect the Eleatics and Heraclitus differed in their opinions as to the senses. They both held that they were untrustworthy, that is to say, that they were not the organs of ultimate and universal truth. So far they agreed. But they differed in this, that whereas the Eleatics discredited the senses because they presented the universe to us in a fluxional or ever-varying condition, and thus deceived us as to its true character, which, according to them, was that of fixedness, Heraclitus, on the contrary, discredited these, because they presented the universe to us, or at least many of its objects, in an apparently fixed and unchanging condition, and thus deceived us as to the true character of sublunary things, which, according to him, was that of fluctuation. According to the one party the senses mislead, because they make us regard the permanent as changeable; and, according to the other party, they mislead, because they make us regard the changeable as permanent. Both parties, however, agree, as I have said, in holding that they do not make known to us the absolute truth; and therefore Mr Lewes, in his 'History of Philosophy,' is certainly mistaken when he says,