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“The fact is that we really have no part nor
parcel in Being,1 but everything of a mortal nature is
at some stage between coming into existence and
passing away,2 and presents only a dim and uncertain
semblance and appearance of itself; and if you apply
the whole force of your mind in your desire to
apprehend it, it is like unto the violent grasping of
water, which, by squeezing and compression, loses the
handful enclosed, as it spurts through the fingers3;
[p. 241]
even so Reason, pursuing the exceedingly clear appearance of every one of those things that are susceptible
to modification and change, is baffled by the one
aspect of its coming into being, and by the other of
its passing away ; and thus it is unable to apprehend
a single thing that is abiding or really existent.
“‘It is impossible to step twice in the same river’
are the words of Heracleitus,4 nor is it possible to lay
hold twice of any mortal substance in a permanent
state ; by the suddenness and swiftness of the change
in it there ‘comes dispersion and, at another time,
a gathering together’; or, rather, not at another time
nor later, but at the same instant it both settles into
its place and forsakes its place ; ‘it is coming and
going.’
“Wherefore that which is born of it never attains
unto being because of the unceasing and unstaying
process of generation, which, ever bringing change,
produces from the seed an embryo, then a babe, then a
child, and in due course a boy, a young man, a mature
man, an elderly man, an old man, causing the first
generations and ages to pass away by those which
succeed them. But we have a ridiculous fear of one
death, we who have already died so many deaths, and
still are dying! For not only is it true, as Heracleitus5
used to say, that the death of heat is birth for steam,
and the death of steam is birth for water, but the case
is even more clearly to be seen in our own selves: the
man in his prime passes away when the old man comes
into existence, the young man passes away into the
[p. 243]
man in his prime, the child into the young man, and the
babe into the child. Dead is the man of yesterday, for
he is passed into the man of to-day ; and the man of
to-day is dying as he passes into the man of to-morrow.
Nobody remains one person, nor is one person; but
we become many persons, even as matter is drawn
about some one semblance and common mould6 with
imperceptible movement. Else how is it that, if we
remain the same persons, we take delight in some
things now, whereas earlier we took delight in different
things ; that we love or hate opposite things, and so
too with our admirations and our disapprovals, and
that we use other words and feel other emotions and
have no longer the same personal appearance, the
same external form, or the same purposes in mind ?
For without change it is not reasonable that a person
should have different experiences and emotions ; and
if he changes, he is not the same person ; and if he is
not the same person, he has no permanent being, but
changes his very nature as one personality in him
succeeds to another. Our senses, through ignorance
of reality, falsely tell us that what appears to be is.
1 Cf. Philo, De Iosepho, 125 (chap. xxii.).
2 Cf. Diels, Frag. der Vorsokratiker, i. 15, Anaximander, no. 9; Plato, Phaedo, 95 e; von Arnim, Stoicorum Veterum Fragmenta, ii. 594 (p. 183).
3 Cf. Moralia, 1082 a.
4 Cf. Diels, Frag. der Vorsokratiker, i. p. 96, Heracleitus, no. 91. Plutarch refers to this dictum also in Moralia, 559 c.
5 Cf. Diels, Frag. der Vorsokratiker, i. p. 93, Heracleitus, no. 76.
6 Cf. Plato, Timaeus, 50 c.