meditating on these examples, I think you may bring yourselves to understand something of the doctrine of Being and not-Being, as inseparably united in Becoming. You are not, however, to suppose that in cases where the changes are not thus apparent, no changes are taking place. The process may often be imperceptible; yet I believe that change is continually going on everywhere, and in every particle in the universe. If time, in a thousand years, tells perceptibly upon the granite boulder, we may be assured that at every instant it is telling upon it. Every particle of it is continually undergoing some minute change, some change so minute that it vanishes in the very act of being born, and seems to be no change at all. And the whole universe, I am inclined to think, is in this fluxional, this at once existent and non-existent predicament. Such, at least, is the doctrine of Heraclitus. Change is his universal. This conception is, according to him, a necessity of reason, a truth; indeed, the truth for all intellect. And the elements of this conception are Being and not-Being in indissoluble union, not mere Being with the Eleatics, not mere not-Being, for Being cannot be got rid of. Reason must think Being, but in the very same thought reason must think not-Being. The unity of these two is the law of all life and of all nature, and this unity is expressed in the words, a process, a becoming.
29. In connection with this description of the main
