THREE:Or Justice most unjustly were she calledThere still remained one last problem to solve, one point228 where the converging streams of ethical and metaphysical speculation met and mixed. Granted that knowledge is the souls highest energy, what is the object of this beatific vision? Granted that all particular energies co-operate for a common purpose, what is the end to which they are subordinated? Granted that dialectic leads us up through ascending gradations to one all-comprehensive idea, how is that idea to be defined? Plato only attempts to answer this last question by re-stating it under the form of an illustration. As the sun at once gives life to all Nature, and light to the eye by which Nature is perceived, so also the idea of Good is the cause of existence and of knowledge alike, but transcends them both as an absolute unity, of which we cannot even say that it is, for the distinction of subject and predicate would bring back relativity and plurality again. Here we seem to have the Socratic paradox reversed. Socrates identified virtue with knowledge, but, at the same time, entirely emptied the latter of its speculative content. Plato, inheriting the idea of knowledge in its artificially restricted significance, was irresistibly drawn back to the older philosophy whence it had been originally borrowed; then, just as his master had given an ethical application to science, so did he, travelling over the same ground in an opposite direction, extend the theory of ethics far beyond its legitimate range, until a principle which seemed to have no meaning, except in reference to human conduct, became the abstract bond of union between all reality and all thought.
THREE:It was natural that one who ranged with such consummate mastery over the whole world of apparent reality, should believe in no other reality; that for him truth should only319 mean the systematisation of sense and language, of opinion, and of thought. The visible order of nature was present to his imagination in such precise determination and fulness of detail that it resisted any attempt he might have made to conceive it under a different form. Each of his conclusions was supported by analogies from every other department of enquiry, because he carried the peculiar limitations of his thinking faculty with him wherever he turned, and unconsciously accommodated every subject to the framework which they imposed. The clearness of his ideas necessitated the use of sharply-drawn distinctions, which prevented the free play of generalisation and fruitful interchange of principles between the different sciences. And we shall have occasion to show hereafter, that, when he attempted to combine rival theories, it was done by placing them in juxtaposition rather than by mutual interpenetration. Again, with his vivid perceptions, it was impossible for him to believe in the justification of any method claiming to supersede, or even to supplement, their authority. Hence he was hardly less opposed to the atomism of Democritus than to the scepticism of Protagoras or the idealism of Plato. Hence, also, his dislike for all explanations which assumed that there were hidden processes at work below the surface of things, even taking surface in its most literal sense. Thus, in discussing the question why the sea is salt, he will not accept the theory that rivers dissolve out the salt from the strata through which they pass, and carry it down to the sea, because river-water tastes fresh; and propounds in its stead the utterly false hypothesis of a dry saline evaporation from the earths surface, which he supposes to be swept seawards by the wind.205 Even in his own especial province of natural history the same tendency leads him astray. He asserts that the spider throws off its web from the surface of its body like a skin, instead of evolving it from within, as Democritus had taught.206 The same thinker had320 endeavoured to prove by analogical reasoning that the invertebrate animals must have viscera, and that only their extreme minuteness prevents us from perceiving them; a view which his successor will not admit.207 In fact, wherever the line between the visible and the invisible is crossed, Aristotles powers are suddenly paralysed, as if by enchantment.No subject connected with mechanics has been more thoroughly investigated than that of gearing. Text-books are replete with every kind of information pertaining to wheels, at least so far as the subject can be made a mathematical one; and to judge from the amount of matter, formul?, and diagrams, relating to the teeth of wheels that an apprentice will meet with, he will no doubt be led to believe that the main object of modern engineering is to generate wheels. It must be admitted that the teeth of wheels and the proportions of wheels is a very important matter to understand, and should be studied with the greatest care; but it is equally important to know how to produce the teeth in metal after their configuration has been defined on paper; to understand the endurance of teeth under abrasive wear when made of wrought or cast iron, brass or steel; how patterns can be constructed from which correct wheels may be cast, and how the teeth of wheels can be cut [52]by machinery, and so on.
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