Meanwhile the old principle of universal doubt could no longer be maintained in presence of the certainties already won by modern science. Man, in the time of Newton, had, as Pope tersely puts it, too much knowledge for the sceptic side. The problem was not how to establish the reality, but how to ascertain the origin and possible extent of that knowledge. The first to perceive this, the first to evolve criticism out of scepticism, and therefore the real founder of modern philosophy, was Locke. Nevertheless, even with him, the advantage of studying the more recent in close connexion with the earlier developments of thought does not cease; it only enters on a new phase. If he cannot, like his predecessors, be directly affiliated to one or more of the Greek schools, his position can be illustrated by a parallel derived from the history of those schools. What Arcesilaus and Carneades had been to Socrates and his successors, that Locke was, in a large measure, to Bacon and the Cartesians. He went back to the initial doubt which with them had been overborne by the dogmatic reaction, and insisted on making it a reality. The spirit of the Apologia is absent from Platos later dialogues, only to reappear with even more than its original power in the teaching of the New Academy. And, in like manner, Descartes introspective method, with its demand for clear ideas, becomes, in the Essay concerning Human Understanding, an irresistible solvent for 420the psychologyy and physics of its first propounder. The doctrine of innate ideas, the doctrine that extension is the essence of matter, the doctrine that thought is the essence of mind, the more general doctrine, held also by Bacon, that things have a discoverable essence whence all their properties may be deduced by a process analogous to mathematical reasoning,all collapsed when brought to the test of definite and concrete experience.
FORE:Well, theres a clothes cupboardin the back corner, Dick said. Lets look in that, you and I. Sandy, you stay back and keep watch. Dick, quick to see Larrys attitude toward Sandy, wanted to have a dependable chum at his side as he investigated while he hoped to give Sandy more confidence by leaving him in the lighted part of the building, under the smudged, dusty skylight.
ONE:"She is very magnificent," said the officer, coldly. It was plain that magnificence was not what he admired in woman. And there it had dropped.But he did not believe he had made his captive so tamely surrender.
TWO:"Yes," Cairness called back.
THREE:What do weho-hocare? Dick chuckled. Another thingeven if the electric current is off and the motor doesnt worklook at that small, hinged doordo you see that the knob of the spring lockis onourside! He broke out in a fresh cackle of laughter.
FORE:
Who was in that boat? he asked. Could you recognize him?Cairness was still in his dust-grayed outfit, his hair was below where his collar would have been had he been wearing one, and his nose was on its way to at least the twentieth new skin that summer. In all his years of the frontier, he had never become too well tanned to burn. His appearance was not altogether reassuring, Stone thought. He was not only an ass, he[Pg 172] was also toughthe sort of a fellow with whom it was as well to remember that your six-shooter is beneath the last copy of your paper, on the desk at your elbow.His plan for his chef-d'?uvre, St. Paul's, like his grand plan for the City, with its principal streets ninety feet wide, its second-rate streets sixty, and its third-rate thirty, was rejected. This cathedral was a composition compact and simple, consisting of a single general octagonal mass, surmounted by a dome, and extended on its west side by a portico, and a short nave or vestibule within. The great idea of Wren was to adapt it to Protestant worship, and therefore he produced a design for the interior, the parts of which were beautifully grouped together so as to produce at once regularity and intricacy, yet without those long side aisles and recesses, which the processions and confessionals of Roman Catholic worship require. The whole long period of Wren's erection of this noble pile was one continued battle with the conceit, ignorance, and dogmatism of the commissioners, who made his life a bitter martyrdom; and when we read the admired inscription in St. Paul's, "Si monumentum requiris, circumspice," we behold, on obeying its injunction, only what Wren did, not what he suffered in doing it.Oh, well, Dick was always hopeful, maybe well get a break sooner or later.