THREE:Timon, a celebrated disciple of Pyrrho, added another and, from the speculative point of view, a much more powerful argument, which, however, may equally have been139 borrowed from the masters lectures. Readers of the Posterior Analytics will remember how strongly Aristotle dwells on the necessity of starting with first principles which are self-evidently true. The chain of demonstration must have something to hang on, it cannot be carried back ad infinitum. Now, Timon would not admit of such a thing as first principles. Every assumption, he says, must rest on some previous assumption, and as this process cannot be continued for ever, there can be no demonstration at all. This became a very favourite weapon with the later Sceptics, and, still at the suggestion of Aristotle, they added the further trope of compelling their adversaries to choose between going back ad infinitum and reasoning in a circlein other words, proving the premises by means of the conclusion. Modern science would not feel much appalled by the sceptical dilemma. Its actual first principles are only provisionally assumed as ultimate, and it is impossible for us to tell how much farther their analysis may be pursued; while, again, their validity is guaranteed by the circular process of showing that the consequences deduced from them agree with the facts of experience. But as against those modern philosophers who, in adherence to the Aristotelian tradition, still seek to base their systems on first principles independent of any individual experience, the sceptical argument is unanswerable, and has even been strengthened by the progress of knowledge. To this day, thinkers of different schools cannot agree about the foundations of belief, and what to one seems self-evidently true, is to another either conceivably or actually false. To Mr. Herbert Spencer the persistence of force is a necessary truth; to Prof. Stanley Jevons its creation is a perfectly possible contingency; while to others, again, the whole conception of force, as understood by Mr. Spencer, is so absolutely unmeaning that they would decline to entertain any proposition about the invariability of the objective reality which it is supposed to represent. And when the140 priori dogmatist affects to treat the negations of his opponents as something that they do not think, but only think they think, they may, with perfect fairness, attribute his rejection of their beliefsas, for example, free-willto a similar subjective illusion. Moreover, the pure experimentalists can point to a circumstance not foreseen by the ancient sceptics, which is that propositions once generally regarded as incontrovertible by thinking men, are now as generally abandoned by them.Well, he reflected, its something, now, anyway. We can look for a Frenchmanand learn if theres one named Gaston.
FORE:"7. Who neglect necessary precautions which ought to be taken on behalf of the army.Leona made no reply. Her eyes were fixed moodily on space.
THREE:As Jeff swooped lower, inspecting, Dick caught a good glimpse of the tilted, quiet focus of Sandys gesture."S?ur Eulalie!... S?ur Eulalie!... You ... you ... are a ... cousin ... of ... S?ur Eulalie?"
FORE:Proceeding from these premises, the first thing should be to examine the action of existing valve gear, to determine where this want of the dead-stroke function can best be supplied, and to gain the aid of such suggestions as existing mechanism may offer, also to see how far the appliances in use may become a part of any new arrangement."Community of ...
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THREE:Oh, Sandy, youre letting wild imagination run away with you!The relation between the feeding and cutting motion of reciprocating machines is not generally considered, and forms an interesting problem for investigation.
FORE:It is possible, we think, to trace a similar evolution in the history of the Attic drama. The tragedies of Aeschylus resemble the old Ionian philosophy in this, that they are filled with material imagery, and that they deal with remote interests, remote times, and remote places. Sophocles withdraws his action into the subjective sphere, and simultaneously works out a pervading contrast between the illusions by which men are either lulled to false security or racked with needless anguish, and the terrible or consolatory reality to which they finally awaken. We have also, in his well-known irony, in the unconscious self-betrayal of his characters, that subtle evanescent allusiveness to a hidden truth, that gleaming of reality through appearance which constitutes, first the dialectic, then the mythical illustration, and finally the physics of Plato. In Aeschylus also we have the spectacle of sudden and violent vicissitudes, the abasement of insolent prosperity, and the punishment of long successful crime; only with him the characters which attract most interest are not the blind victims, but the accomplices or the confidants of destinythe great figures of a Prometheus, a Darius, an Eteocles, a Clytemnestra, and a Cassandra, who are raised above the common level to an eminence where the secrets of past and future are unfolded to their gaze. Far otherwise with Sophocles. The leading actors in his most characteristic works, Oedipus, Electra, Dejanira, Ajax, and Philoctetes, are surrounded by forces which they can neither control nor understand; moving in a world of illusion, if they help to work out their own destinies it is unconsciously, or even in direct opposition to their own designs.208 Hence in Aeschylus we have something324 like that superb self-confidence which distinguishes a Parmenides and a Heracleitus; in Sophocles that confession of human ignorance which the Athenian philosophers made on their own behalf, or strove to extract from others. Euripides introduces us to another mode of thought, more akin to that which characterises Aristotle. For, although there is abundance of mystery in his tragedies, it has not the profound religious significance of the Sophoclean irony; he uses it rather for romantic and sentimental purposes, for the construction of an intricate plot, or for the creation of pathetic situations. His whole power is thrown into the immediate and detailed representation of living passion, and of the surroundings in which it is displayed, without going far back into its historical antecedents like Aeschylus, or, like Sophocles, into the divine purposes which underlie it. On the other hand, as a Greek writer could not be other than philosophical, he uses particular incidents as an occasion for wide generalisations and dialectical discussions; these, and not the idea of justice or of destiny, being the pedestal on which his figures are set. And it may be noticed as another curious coincidence that, like Aristotle again, he is disposed to criticise his predecessors, or at least one of them, Aeschylus, with some degree of asperity.
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THREE:In his attacks on the prevalent theories of ethics, Aenesidmus again reminds us both of Protagoras and of modern agnosticism. According to him, the general disagreement of mankind proves, among other things, that there is no definable highest goodit is neither virtue, nor pleasure, nor knowledge.298 In the absence of any dogmatic teaching on the subject at the time when he lived, Protagoras could not give an opinion with regard to the summum bonum; but Platos famous dialogue represents him as one who, from his point of view, would be unwilling to admit the possibility of introducing fixed principles into conduct; and in like manner, Mr. Herbert Spencer, while accepting the hedonistic principle, gives it such an extremely general signification that he is thrown back on the sceptical principle of leaving everyone free to follow his own inclinations, provided that, in so doing, he does not interfere with the liberty of others.So far, Aristotle regards the soul as a function, or energy, or perfection of the body, from which it can no more be separated than vision from the eye. It is otherwise with the part of mind which he calls Nous, or Reasonthe faculty which takes cognisance of abstract ideas or the pure forms of things. This corresponds, in the microcosm, to the eternal Nous of the macrocosm, and, like it, is absolutely immaterial, not depending for its activity on the exercise of any bodily organ. There is, however, a general analogy between sensation and thought considered as processes of cognition. Previous to experience, the Nous is no thought in particular, but merely a possibility of thinking, like a smooth wax tablet waiting to be written on. It is determined to some particular idea by contact with the objective forms of things, and in this determination is raised from power to actuality. The law of moderation, however, does not apply to thought. Excessive stimulation is first injurious and then destructive to the organs of sense, but we cannot have too much of an idea; the more intense it is the better are we able to conceive all the367 ideas that come under it, just because ideation is an incorporeal process. And there seems to be this further distinction between sensation and thought, that the latter is much more completely identified with its object than the former; it is in the very act of imprinting themselves on the Nous that the forms of things become perfectly detached from matter, and so attain their final realisation. It is only in our consciousness that the eternal ideas of transient phenomena become conscious of themselves. Such, we take it, is the true interpretation of Aristotles famous distinction between an active and a passive Nous. The one, he tells us, makes whatever the other is made. The active Nous is like light raising colours from possibility to actuality. It is eternal, but we have no remembrance of its past existence, because the passive Nous, without which it can think nothing, is perishable.
FORE:
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