Other pre-Socratic philosophers thought that the substance undergoing transformation was less important than the process of transformation itself. Thus Heraclitus declared that there really was no permanent substance to be found. Permanence, he thought, was a mere illusion resulting from the deceptive character of sense experience, whereas in reality everything is in a constant state of flux. The illusion of permanence is a function of differential patterns of change in nature -- a stone appears more permanent than a storm only because the two vary in their rate of transformation. So all of nature is characterized by the process of change, or variable patterns of transformation, all of which are governed by the only permanent reality: the rational laws of change (i.e., the logos). The transformations of nature are not random and chaotic, they are rather orderly and programmed by a certain inherent logic. ~ Page 15 "By the Grace of Guild" ~ Loyal Rue