400 Dr. E. J. Mills on Statical and 



it humorously, the sport is rather at the expense of his auditors' 

 intelligence than concerning his subject. Herakleitos pointed out 

 the illusory nature of the seeming permanence or stationary condi- 

 tion of things: "everything moves, and nothing remains," he said. 

 The flow of a river is an apt illustration of the fleeting nature of the 

 world; in which, indeed, the only reality is the act of transition, or 

 the " becoming ;" not inception and results, but process. In the 

 instant of " becoming " he conceives the contrary determinations 

 of being and not-being united, — a notion which Professor Ferrier 

 has beautifully illustrated by the well-known geometrical expla- 

 nation of two opposite forces combining in a continuous curvi- 

 linear path. The sophists, especially Protagoras, applied this 

 doctrine, though not with the highest success, to justice and 

 morals, chiefly in the interest of the freedom of the individual 

 will. In the Aristotelian philosophy, the conditions of nature 

 are summed up as motion, space (the possibility of motion), and 

 time (the measure of motion) ; but, in Aristotle, the idea becomes 

 less pure, is circumscribed with limits in the detail, and loses in 

 elasticity and vigour. The same is true of the Epicureans ; but 

 it formed the latent basis of their philosophy, as likewise of the 

 Skepticism of every age. 



In much more modern times, the idea of motion was most 

 distinctly grasped by Hobbes, as may be seen by referring to his 

 ' Humane Nature/ 2nd edition (1650), from which work I have 

 taken the following statements. " That the Subject wherein 



all things — that all life, all nature, all thought, all reason centres in the 

 oneness or conciliation of Being and not-Being. A firm grasp of this doc- 

 trine, a clear insight into its truth, and a vigorous enforcement of it and its 

 consequences, would lead to the construction of a truer philosophy than 

 that which is at present so much in vogue. That philosophy is founded 

 entirely on the denial of the unity of contrary determinations in the same 

 subject. It takes two opposite conceptions, and holding them apart it 

 shows that reason is baffled in its attempts adequately to conceive either 

 of them. It is in this way that Sir W. Hamilton and Mr. Mansel achieved 

 what they conceive to be a great triumph in proclaiming, or, as they think, 

 in proving the impotency of human reason. But what if the conceptions 

 thus set in opposition to each other are not conceptions at all, but are mere 

 moments or elements of conception?" Compare with this the following 

 passage from Herbert Spencer (First Principles, 2nd edit. p. 277). "The 

 law we seek, therefore, must be the law of the continuous redistribution of 



matter and motion. Absolute rest and permanence do not exist And 



the question to be answered is — What dynamic principle, true of the meta- 

 morphosis as a whole and in its details, expresses these ever-changing 



relations ? a Philosophy rightly so-called can come into existence 



only by solving the problem." And again, p. 285, "While the general his- 

 tory of every aggregate is definable as a change from a diffused impercep- 

 tible state to a concentrated perceptible state and again to a diffused imper- 

 ceptible state, every detail of the history is definable as a part of either the 

 one change or the other. This, then, must be that universal law " 



