60 TWO THEORIES OF KNOWLEDGE 



Heracleitus, but his disciples did not although we 

 think there is good ground for believing that he did l 

 his disciples did not realise that a process, whilst 

 it implies constant flux and change, implies also 

 something permanent even in its mutations, some- 

 thing which undergoes the change and sustains the 

 flow. 



To understand a thing is to discover how it 

 operates. The eternal forms of things are laws of 

 natural action. Such are the law of gravitation, 

 the laws of optics or of chemical combination. A 

 static picture unless so interpreted must be at once 

 valueless and meaningless. 



It follows that Thought and Discourse, in furnish- 

 ing us with Knowledge, must themselves be active, 

 and must in some way or other reproduce the 

 activity of Nature. Thought, in short, is an 

 Activity which reproduces the activity of things, 

 the activity in which the phenomena of Nature 

 arise. 



But how do we arrive at any apprehension of 

 Natural Action ? What informs us that Nature is 

 a potency ever operative ? What suggests to us 



1 ~K.6fffi.ov r6vdf TOV avrbv airdvTwv oi/'re ns Qei> otfre 



dXX' ty alel Kai &rrt Kal &TTCU irvp ddfaov aLirT6p.evov 

 K(d diroapevvij/jievov ^rpa. Quoted by Clement of Alexandria, etc. 

 (The First Philosophers of Greece, by A. Fairbanks, p. 28.) 



