TWO:
FORE:It has been the object thus far to show that machines, processes, and mechanical manipulation generally may be systematised and generalised to a greater or less extent, and that a failure to reduce mechanical manipulation and machine construction to certain rules and principles can mainly be ascribed to our want of knowledge, and not to any inherent difficulty or condition which prevents such solution. The same proposition is applicable to invention, with the difference that invention, in its true sense, may admit of generalisation more readily than machine processes.
FORE:It is an often-quoted observation of Friedrich Schlegels that every man is born either a Platonist or an Aristotelian. If we narrow the remark to the only class which, perhaps, its author recognised as human beings, namely, all thinking men, it will be found to contain a certain amount of truth, though probably not what Schlegel intended; at any rate something requiring to be supplemented by other truths before its full meaning can be understood. The common opinion seems to be that Plato was a transcendentalist, while Aristotle was an experientialist; and that this constitutes the most typical distinction between them. It would, however, be a mistake to292 suppose that the priori and posteriori methods were marked off with such definiteness in Platos time as to render possible a choice between them. The opposition was not between general propositions and particular facts, but between the most comprehensive and the most limited notions. It was as if the question were now to be raised whether we should begin to teach physiology by at once dividing the organic from the inorganic world, or by directing the learners attention to some one vital act. Now, we are expressly told that Plato hesitated between these two methods; and in his Dialogues, at least, we find the easier and more popular one employed by preference. It is true that he often appeals to wide principles which do not rest on an adequate basis of experimental evidence; but Aristotle does so also, more frequently even, and, as the event proved, with more fatal injury to the advance of knowledge. In his Rhetoric he even goes beyond Plato, constructing the entire art from the general principles of dialectics, psychology, and ethics, without any reference, except for the sake of illustration, to existing models of eloquence.
FORE:It may be urged that beauty, however difficult of attainment or severe in form, is, after all, essentially superficial; and that a morality elaborated on the same principles will be equally superficialwill, in fact, be little more than the art of keeping up appearances, of displaying fine sentiments, of avoiding those actions the consequences of which are immediately felt to be disagreeable, and, above all, of not needlessly wounding anyones sensibilities. Such an imitation of moralitywhich it would be a mistake to call hypocrisyhas no doubt been common enough among all civilised nations; but there is no reason to believe that it was in any way favoured by the circumstances of Greek life. There is even evidence of a contrary tendency, as, indeed, might be expected among a people whose most important states were saved from the corrupt60ing influences of a court. Where the sympathetic admiration of shallow and excitable spectators is the effect chiefly sought after, the showy virtues will be preferred to the solid, and the appearance to the reality of all virtue; while brilliant and popular qualities will be allowed to atone for the most atrocious crimes. But, among the Greeks of the best period, courage and generosity rank distinctly lower than temperance and justice; their poets and moralists alike inculcate the preference of substance to show; and in no single instance, so far as we can judge, did they, as modern nations often do, for the sake of great achievements condone great wrongs. It was said of a Greek and by a Greek that he did not wish to seem but to be just.46 We follow the judgment of the Greeks themselves in preferring Leonidas to Pausanias, Aristeides to Themistocles, and Socrates to Alcibiades. And we need only compare Epameinondas with David or Pericles with Solomon as national heroes, to perceive at once how much nearer the two Greeks come to our own standard of perfection, and how futile are the charges sometimes brought against those from whose traditions we have inherited their august and stainless fame.There must, one would suppose, be some force in the Epicurean philosophy of death, for it has been endorsed by no less a thinker and observer than Shakspeare. To make the great dramatist responsible for every opinion uttered by one or other of his characters would, of course, be absurd; but when we find personages so different in other respects as Claudio, Hamlet, and Macbeth, agreeing in the sentiment that, apart from the prospect of a future judgment, there is nothing to appal us in the thought of death, we cannot avoid the inference that he is here making them the mouthpiece of his own convictions, even, as in Hamlets famous soliloquy, at the expense of every dramatic propriety. Nevertheless, the answer of humanity to such sophisms will always be that of Homers Achilles, μ? δ? μοι θ?νατ?ν γε παρα?δαTalk me not fair of death! A very simple process of reasoning will make this clear. The love of life necessarily involves a constant use of precautions against its loss. The certainty of death means the certainty that these precautions shall one day prove unavailing; the consciousness of its near approach means the consciousness that they have actually failed. In both cases the result must be a sense of baffled or arrested effort, more or less feeble when it is imagined, more or less acute when it it is realised. But this diversion of the conscious energies from their accustomed channel, this turning back of the feelings on themselves, constitutes the essence of all emotion; and where the object of the arrested energies was to avert a danger, it constitutes the emotion of fear. Thus, by an inevitable law, the love of life has for its reverse side the dread of death. Now the love of life is guaranteed by the survival of the fittest; it must last as long as the human race, for91 without it the race could not last at all. If, as Epicurus urged, the supreme desirability of pleasure is proved by its being the universal object of pursuit among all species of animals,177 the supreme hatefulness of death is proved by an analogous experience; and we may be sure that, even if pessimism became the accepted faith, the darkened prospect would lead to no relaxation of our grasp on life. A similar mode of reasoning applies to the sorrow and anguish, mortis comites et funeris atri, from which the benevolent Roman poet would fain relieve us. For, among a social species, the instinct for preserving others is second only to the instinct of self-preservation, and frequently rises superior to it. Accordingly, the loss of those whom we love causes, and must always cause us, a double distress. There is, first, the simple pain due to the eternal loss of their society, a pain of which Lucretius takes no account. And, secondly, there is the arrest of all helpful activity on their behalf, the continual impulse to do something for them, coupled with the chilling consciousness that it is too late, that nothing more can be done. So strong, indeed, is this latter feeling that it often causes the loss of those whose existence was a burden to themselves and others, to be keenly felt, if only the survivors were accustomed, as a matter of duty, to care for them and to struggle against the disease from which they suffered. Philosophy may help to fill up the blanks thus created, by directing our thoughts to objects of perennial interest, and she may legitimately discourage the affectation or the fostering of affliction; but the blanks themselves she cannot explain away, without forfeiting all claim on our allegiance as the ultimate and incorruptible arbitress of truth.
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THREE:In the Hospital Leo XIII, that eager Netherlander, Professor Noyons, did all he could to save as many as could be saved of the wretched Belgian wounded; but as rain and cold had done so much harm to the wounds, amputation of the injured limbs was as a rule the only remedy left.
THREE:The power which Socrates possessed of rousing other minds to independent activity and apostolic transmission of spiritual gifts was, as we have said, the second verification of his doctrine. Even those who, like Antisthenes and Aristippus, derived their positive theories from the Sophists rather than from him, preferred to be regarded as his followers; and Plato, from whom his ideas received their most splendid development, has acknowledged the debt by making that venerated figure the centre of his own immortal Dialogues. A third verification is given by the subjective, practical, dialectic tendency of all subsequent philosophy properly so called. On this point we will content ourselves with mentioning one instance out of many, the recent declaration of Mr. Herbert Spencer that his whole system was constructed for the sake of its ethical conclusion.101"All right," Hetty said cheerfully. "I'll go and get it for you."
THREE:Tools should never be tempered by immersing their edges or cutting parts in the bath, and then allowing the heat to "run down" to attain a proper temper at the edge. I am well aware that this is attacking a general custom, but it is none the less wrong for that reason. Tools so hardened have a gradually diminishing temper from their point or edge, so that no part is properly tempered, and they require continual re-hardening, which spoils the steel; besides, the extreme edge, the only part which is tempered to a proper shade, is usually spoiled by heating and must be ground away to begin with. No latheman who has once had a set of tools tempered throughout by slow drawing, either in an oven, or on a hot plate, will ever consent to point hardening afterwards. A plate of iron, two to two and one-half inches thick, placed over the top of a tool dressing fire, makes a convenient arrangement for tempering tools, besides adding greatly to the convenience of slow heating, which is almost as important as slow drawing. The writer has by actual experiment determined that the amount of tool dressing [117] and tempering, to say nothing of time wasted in grinding tools, may in ordinary machine fitting be reduced one-third by "oven tempering."In machinery the ruling form is cylindrical; in structures other than machinery, those which do not involve motion, the ruling form is rectangular.
