ONE:I showed them the way to Eysden, and they had80 scarcely started when a cavalry patrol came racing on, the men tipsy and their seat rather unstable. Seeing the refugees, they aimed their rifles at them and roared "Hands up!" The poor creatures not only put up their hands, but fell on their knees, and muttered incoherent words. The women folded their hands, and stretched them out to the cavalry, as if praying for mercy. The soldiers looked at the scene for a moment, burst out in a harsh laughter, spurred on their horses, and raced on without a word. Two of them stopped near me. I gave them, however, no time for threats, but quickly showed them the old pass to Vis. As soon as they saw the German writing they said: "All right!" and went off.
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ONE:The principal business of reason is, as we have seen, to376 form abstract ideas or concepts of things. But before the time of Aristotle it had already been discovered that concepts, or rather the terms expressing them, were capable of being united in propositions which might be either true or false, and whose truth might be a matter either of certainty or of simple opinion. Now, in modern psychology, down to the most recent times, it has always been assumed that, just as there is an intellectual faculty or operation called abstraction corresponding to the terms of which a proposition is composed, so also there is a faculty or operation called judgment corresponding to the entire proposition. Sometimes, again, the third operation, which consists in linking propositions together to form syllogisms, is assigned to a distinct faculty called reason; sometimes all three are regarded as ascending steps in a single fundamental process. Neither Plato nor Aristotle, however, had thought out the subject so scientifically. To both the framing, or rather the discovery, of concepts was by far the most important business of a philosopher, judgment and reasoning being merely subsidiary to it. Hence, while in one part of their logic they were realists and conceptualists, in other parts they were nominalists. Abstract names and the definitions unfolding their connotation corresponded to actual entities in Naturethe eternal Ideas of the one and the substantial forms of the otheras well as to mental representations about whose existence they were agreed, while ascribing to them a different origin. But they did not in like manner treat propositions as the expression of natural laws without, or of judgments within, the mind; while reasoning they regarded much more as an art of thinking, a method for the discovery of ideas, than as the Systematisation of a process spontaneously performed by every human being without knowing it; and, even as such, their tendency is to connect it with the theory of definition rather than with the theory of synthetic propositions. Some approach to a realistic view is, indeed, made by both. The377 restless and penetrating thought of Plato had, probably towards the close of his career, led him to enquire into the mutual relations of those Ideas which he had at first been inclined to regard as absolutely distinct. He shows us in the Sophist how the most abstract notions, such as Being, Identity, and so forth, must, to a certain extent, partake of each others nature; and when their relationship does not lie on the surface, he seeks to establish it by the interposition of a third idea obviously connected with both. In the later books of the Republic he also points to a scheme for arranging his Ideas according to a fixed hierarchy resembling the concatenation of mathematical proofs, by ascending and descending whose successive gradations the mind is to become familiarised with absolute truth; and we shall presently see how Aristotle, following in the same track, sought for a counterpart to his syllogistic method in the objective order of things. Nevertheless, with him, as well as with his master, science was not what it is with us, a study of laws, a perpetually growing body of truth, but a process of definition and classification, a systematisation of what had already been perceived and thought.
FORE:The addition of a few questions at the end of each chapter, some of which are not answered in the text, it is thought will assist the main object of the work, which is to promote a habit of logical investigation on the part of learners.
FORE:
FORE:The door closed behind them. Maitrank's fingers crooked and reached for Balmayne.
FORE:If the Roman conquest did not altogether put an end to these sentiments, it considerably mitigated their intensity. The imperial city was too strong to feel endangered by the introduction of alien deities within its precincts. The subject states were relieved from anxiety with regard to a political independence which they had irrecoverably lost. Moreover, since the conquests of Alexander, vast aggregations of human beings had come into existence, to which the ancient exclusiveness was unknown, because they never had been cities at all in the ancient sense of the word. Such were Alexandria and Antioch, and these speedily became centres of religious syncretism. Rome herself, in becoming the capital of an immense empire, acquired the same cosmopolitan character. Her population consisted for the most part of emancipated slaves, and of adventurers from all parts of the world, many of whom had brought their national faiths with them, while all were ready to embrace any new faith which had superior attractions to offer. Another important agent in the diffusion and propagation of new religions was the army. The legions constituted a sort of migratory city, recruited from all parts of the empire, and moving over its whole extent. The dangers of a military life combined with its authoritative ideas are highly favourable to devotion; and the soldiers could readily adopt new modes for the expression of this feeling both from each other and from the inhabitants of the countries where they were stationed, and would in turn204 become missionaries for their dissemination over the most distant regions. That such was actually the case is proved by numerous religious inscriptions found in the neighbourhood of Roman camps.313In the last chapter we considered the philosophy of Plato chiefly under its critical and negative aspects. We saw how it was exclusively from that side that he at first apprehended and enlarged the dialectic of Socrates, how deeply his scepticism was coloured by the religious reaction of the age, and how he attempted, out of his masters mouth, to overturn the positive teaching of the master himself. We saw how, in the Protagoras, he sketched a theory of ethics, which was no sooner completed than it became the starting-point of a still more extended and arduous enquiry. We followed the widening horizon of his speculations until they embraced the whole contemporary life of Hellas, and involved it in a common condemnation as either hopelessly corrupt, or containing within itself the seeds of corruption. We then saw how, by a farther generalisation, he was led to look for the sources of error in the laws of mans sensuous nature and of the phenomenal world with which it holds communion; how, moreover, under the guidance of suggestions coming both from within and from without, he reverted to the earlier schools of Greek thought, and brought their results into parallelism with the main lines of Socratic dialectic. And finally, we watched him planting a firm foothold on the basis of mathematical demonstration; seeking in the very constitution of the soul itself for a derivation of the truths which sensuous experience could not impart, and winning back from215 a more profoundly reasoned religion the hope, the self-confidence, the assurance of perfect knowledge, which had been formerly surrendered in deference to the demands of a merely external and traditional faith. That God alone is wise, and by consequence alone good, might still remain a fixed principle with Plato; but it ceased to operate as a restraint on human aspiration when he had come to recognise an essential unity among all forms of conscious life, which, though it might be clouded and forgotten, could never be entirely effaced. And when Plato tells us, at the close of his career, that God, far more than any individual man, is the measure of all things,133 who can doubt that he had already learned to identify the human and divine essences in the common notion of a universal soul?
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