[Side-note: Nothing permanent except the law of process and implication of contraries--the transmutative force. Fixity of particulars is an illusion for most part, so far as it exists, it is a sin against the order of Nature.] The universal law, destiny, or divine working (according to Herakleitus), consists in this incessant process of generation and destruction, this alternation of contraries. To carry out such law fully, each of the particular manifestations ought to appear and pass away instantaneously--to have no duration of its own, but to be supplanted by its contrary at once. And this happens to a great degree, even in cases where it does not appear to happen: the river appears unchanged, though the water which we touched a short time ago has flowed away:[85] we and all around us are in rapid movement, though we appear stationary: the apparent sameness and fixity is thus a delusion. But Herakleitus does not seem to have thought that his absolute universal force was omnipotent, or accurately carried out in respect to all particulars. Some positive and particular manifestations, when once brought to pass, had a certain measure of fixity, maintaining themselves for more or less time before they were destroyed. There was a difference between one particular and another, in this respect of comparative durability: one was more durable, another less.[86] But according to the universal law or destiny, each particular ought simply to make its appearance, then to be supplanted and re-absorbed; so that the time during which it continued on the scene was, as it were, an unjust usurpation, obtained by encroaching on the equal right of the next comer, and by suspending the negative agency of the universal. Hence arises an antithesis or hostility between the universal law or process on one side, and the persistence of particular states on the other. The universal law or process is generative and destructive, positive and negative, both in one: but the particular realities in which it manifests itself are all positive, each succeeding to its antecedent, and each striving to maintain itself against the negativity or destructive interference of the universal process. Each particular reality represented rest and fixity: each held ground as long as it could against the pressure of the cosmical force, essentially moving, destroying, and renovating. Herakleitus condemns such pretensions of particular states to separate stability, inasmuch as it keeps back the legitimate action of the universal force, in the work of destruction and renovation. [Footnote 85: Aristot. De Coelo, iii. 1, p. 298, b. 30; Physic. viii. 3, p. 253, b. 9. [Greek: Phasi/ tines kinei=sthai tô=n o)/ntôn ou) ta\ me\n ta\ d' ou)/, a)lla\ pa/nta kai\ a)ei\, a)lla\ lantha/nein tou=to tê\n ê(mete/ran ai)/sthêsin]--which words doubtless refer to Herakleitus. See Preller, Hist. Phil. Græc. Rom. s. 47.]