FORE:I had wished to publish this book a long time ago, because I think it my duty to submit to the opinion of the public the things which I witnessed in the unfortunate land of the Belgians, and where I was present at such important events as an impartial spectator. I call myself an impartial spectator, for if this book be anti-German, it should not be forgotten that the facts give it that tendency.
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FORE:"I didn't mean to go quite so far," he muttered. "Only this time you have made the grand mistake of your life. Be silent now and you shall get your jewels back. It is the only way."
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FORE:It is evident, then, that Aristotle cannot be approached with the same perfect dispassionateness as the other great thinkers of antiquity. He is, if not a living force, still a force which must be reckoned with in contemporary controversy. His admirers persist in making an authority of him, or at least of quoting him in behalf of their own favourite convictions. We are, therefore, bound to sift his claims with a severity which would not be altogether gracious in a purely historical review. At the same time it is hoped that historical justice will not lose, but gain, by such a procedure. We shall be the better able to understand what Aristotle was, after first showing what he neither was nor could be. And the utility of our investigations will be still further enhanced if we can show that he represents a fixed type regularly recurring in the revolutions of thought.Such arguments manifestly tell not only against Platonism, but against every kind of transcendental realism, from the natural theology of Paley to the dogmatic agnosticism of Mr. Herbert Spencer. A modern Aristotle might say that the hypothesis of a creative first cause, personal or otherwise, logically involves the assumption of as many original specific energies as there are qualities to be accounted for, and thus gives us the unnecessary trouble of counting everything twice over; that every difficulty and contradiction from which the transcendental assumption is intended to free us, must, on analysis, reappear in the assumption itselffor example, the God who is to deliver us from evil must be himself conceived as the creator of evil; that the infinite and absolute can neither cause, nor be apprehended by, the finite and relative; that to separate from Nature all the forces required for its perpetuation, and relegate them to a sphere apart, is a false antithesis and a sterile abstraction; lastly, that causation, whether efficient or final, once begun, cannot stop; that if this world is not self-existing, nothing is; that the mutual adaptation of thoughts in a designing intelligence requires to be accounted for just like any other adaptation; that if the relative involves the absolute, so also does the relation between the two involve another absolute, and so on to infinity.
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FORE:
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FORE:The latter himself told me that he was released in order to instruct the vicars in the eighteen parishes of his deanery that they should inform their parishioners that the whole village would be burned and the inhabitants killed if the railway-line should be broken up, no matter whether it were done by Belgian soldiers or others.The man who had this experience was Mr. Coppieters, the District Commissioner, a man who had given all his life to the service of society and the good of the community.
FORE:Or buried deep in subterranean gloom,
FORE:
FORE:
FORE:Besides the attentions lavished on every wealthy individual, those who had no children were especially courted, and that too by others who were as well off as themselves with the object of being remembered in their wills. So advantageous a position, indeed, did these orbi, as they were called, occupy, that among the higher classes there was extreme unwillingness to marry; although, as an encouragement to population, the father of three children enjoyed several substantial privileges. This circumstance, again, by preventing the perpetuation of wealthy families, and allowing their property to pass into the hands of degraded fortune-hunters, rendered impossible the consolidation of a new aristocracy which might have reorganised the traditions of liberal culture, and formed an effectual barrier against the downward pressure of despotism on the one side and the inroads of popular superstition on the other.The Wijgmaal battle-field was after all the least horrible. About ten houses seemed to have been set on fire on purpose; the rest had suffered badly from the bombardment. All the inhabitants had fled as soon as the fighting began. The wounded Belgians had been placed in the large dancing-room of a caf, where father Coppens brought them a large hamper full of eatables and drinkables, and whence also he had them transported to Louvain. The food was gratefully accepted, but they were still more eager to get hold of the mugs, as they were very thirsty in consequence of the high temperature caused by the inflamed wounds; often we had to prevent them forcibly from drinking too much.
