ONE:Prout replied that for the present there was no accusation.After much searching, we have not been able to find the originals of the two passages quoted by Sir A. Grant. We have, however, found others setting forth the doctrine of Natural Realism with a clearness which leaves nothing to be desired. Aristotle tells us that former naturalists were wrong when they said that there could be no black or white without vision, and no taste without tasting; that is, they were right about the actuality, and wrong about the possibility; for, as he explains, our sensations are produced by the action of external bodies on the appropriate organs, the activity being the same while the existence is different. A sonorous body produces a sound in our hearing; the sound perceived and the action of the body are identical, but not their existence; for, he adds, the hearer need not be always listening, nor the sonorous body sounding; and so with all the other senses.267
ONE:Attention has been called to this case as one wherein the conditions of operation obviously furnish true data to govern the arrangement of machinery, instead of the determinable strains to which the parts are subjected, and as a good example of the importance of studying mechanical conditions from a practical and experimental point of view. If the general diameter of a shaft is based upon the exact amount of power to be transmitted, or if the diameter of a shaft at various parts is based upon the torsional stress that would be sustained at these points, such a shaft would not only fail to meet the conditions of practical use, but would cost more by attempting such an adaptation. The regular working strain to which shafts are subjected is inversely as the speed at which they run. This becomes a strong reason in favour of arranging shafts to run at a maximum speed, provided there was nothing more than first cost to consider; but there are other and more important conditions to be taken into account, principal among which are the required rate of movement where power is taken off to machines, and the endurance of bearings.We have illustrated the position of Cicero by reference to the master who, more than any other Greek philosopher, seems to have satisfied his ideal of perfect wisdom. We must now observe that nothing is better calculated to show how inadequate was the view once universally taken of Socrates, and still, perhaps, taken by all who are not scholars, than that it should be applicable in so many points to Cicero as well. For, while the influence of the one on human thought was the greatest ever exercised by a single individual, the influence of the other was limited to the acceleration of a movement already in full activity, and moreover tending on the whole in a retrograde direction. The immeasurable superiority of the Athenian lies in his dialectical method. It was not by a mere elimination of differences that he hoped to establish a general agreement, but by reasoning down from admitted principles, which were themselves to be the result of scientific induction brought to bear on a comprehensive and ever-widening area of experience. Hence his scepticism, which was directed against authority, tended as much to stimulate enquiry as that of the Roman declaimer, which was directed against reason, tended to deaden or to depress it. Hence, also, the political philosophy of Socrates was as revolutionary as that of his imitator was conservative. Both were, in a certain sense, aristocrats; but while the aristocracy176 of the elegant rhetorician meant a clique of indolent and incapable nobles, that of the sturdy craftsman meant a band of highly-trained specialists maintained in power by the choice, the confidence, and the willing obedience of an intelligent people. And while the religion of Cicero was a blind reliance on providence supplemented by priestcraft in this world, with the hope, if things came to the worst, of a safe retreat from trouble in the next; the religion of Socrates was an active co-operation with the universal mind, an attempt to make reason and the will of God prevail on earth, with the hope, if there was any future state, of carrying on in it the intellectual warfare which alone had made life worth living here. No less a contrast could be expected between the orator who turned to philosophy only for the occupation of a leisure hour, or for relief from the pangs of disappointed ambition, and the thinker who gave her his whole existence as the elect apostle and martyr of her creed.
ONE:An unrighteous gain.V.
