THREE:Whatever may have been the errors into which Socrates fell, he did not commit the fatal mistake of compromising his ethical doctrine by associating it indissolubly with his metaphysical opinions. Religion, with him, instead of being the source and sanction of all duty, simply brought in an additional dutythat of gratitude to the gods for their goodness. We shall presently see where he sought for the ultimate foundation of morality, after completing our survey of the dialectic method with which it was so closely connected. The induction of Socrates, when it went beyond that kind of analogical reasoning which we have just been considering, was mainly abstraction, the process by which he obtained those general conceptions or definitions which played so great a part in his philosophy. Thus, on comparing the different virtues, as commonly distinguished, he found that they all agreed in requiring knowledge, which he accordingly concluded to be the essence of virtue. So other moralists have been led to conclude that right actions resemble one another in their felicific quality, and In that alone. Similarly, political economists find, or formerly found (for we do not wish to be positive on the matter), that a common characteristic of all industrial employments is the desire to secure the maximum of profit with the minimum of trouble. Another comparison shows that value depends on the relation between supply and demand. Aesthetic enjoyments of every kind resemble one another by including an element of ideal emotion. It is a common characteristic of all cognitions that they are151 constructed by association out of elementary feelings. All societies are marked by a more or less developed division of labour. These are given as typical generalisations which have been reached by the Socratic method. They are all taken from the philosophic sciencesthat is, the sciences dealing with phenomena which are partly determined by mind, and the systematic treatment of which is so similar that they are frequently studied in combination by a single thinker, and invariably so by the greatest thinkers of any. But were we to examine the history of the physical sciences, we should find that this method of wide comparison and rapid abstraction cannot, as Francis Bacon imagined, be successfully applied to them. The facts with which they deal are not transparent, not directly penetrable by thought; hence they must be treated deductively. Instead of a front attack, we must, so to speak, take them in the rear. Bacon never made a more unfortunate observation than when he said that the syllogism falls far short of the subtlety of Nature. Nature is even simpler than the syllogism, for she accomplishes her results by advancing from equation to equation. That which really does fall far short of her subtlety is precisely the Baconian induction with its superficial comparison of instances. No amount of observation could detect any resemblance between the bursting of a thunderstorm and the attraction of a loadstone, or between the burning of charcoal and the rusting a nail.
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Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipisicing elit. Aliquam aut tenetur, amet earum quia eligendi obcaecati. Repudiandae id illum, vero iste enim reprehenderit quaerat, harum pariatur ipsa nulla tempora ex ratione illo assumenda libero ea, delectus vitae, expedita optio porro.
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipisicing elit. Aliquam aut tenetur, amet earum quia eligendi obcaecati. Repudiandae id illum, vero iste enim reprehenderit quaerat, harum pariatur ipsa nulla tempora ex ratione illo assumenda libero ea, delectus vitae, expedita optio porro.
ONE:A proof of this proposition is furnished in the case of standard machine tools for metal-cutting, a class of machinery that for many years past has received the most thorough attention at the hands of our best mechanical engineers.
ONE:The old gleam was coming back to his eyes. Leona drew a deep breath. She had half expected this at the time; there was always the chance that this man knew a great deal more than she imagined. But help must be near her by this time, and she could always prevaricate.
ONE:The division of labour, that system upon which we may say our great industrial interests are founded, is in machine fitting promoted in a wonderful degree by the use of gauging implements. If standard dimensions can be maintained, it is easy to see that the parts of a machine can be constructed by different workmen, or in different shops, and these parts when assembled all fit together, without that tedious and uncertain plan of try-fitting which was once generally practised. There are, it is true, certain kinds of fitting which cannot well be performed by gauges; moving flat surfaces, such as the bearings of lathe slides or the faces of steam engine valves, are sooner and better fitted by trying them together and scraping off the points of contact; but even in such cases the character of the work will be improved, if one or both surfaces have been first levelled by gauging or surface plates.
