ONE:Whether Plato ever succeeded in making the idea of Good quite clear to others, or even to himself, is more than we can tell. In the Republic he declines giving further explanations on the ground that his pupils have not passed through the necessary mathematical initiation. Whether quantitative reasoning was to furnish the form or the matter of transcendent dialectic is left undetermined. We are told that on one occasion a large audience assembled to hear Plato lecture on229 the Good, but that, much to their disappointment, the discourse was entirely filled with geometrical and astronomical investigations. Bearing in mind, however, that mathematical science deals chiefly with equations, and that astronomy, according to Plato, had for its object to prove the absolute uniformity of the celestial motions, we may perhaps conclude that the idea of Good meant no more than the abstract notion of identity or indistinguishable likeness. The more complex idea of law as a uniformity of relations, whether coexistent or successive, had not then dawned, but it has since been similarly employed to bring physics into harmony with ethics and logic.By examining into the facts, an apprentice will find that all truly successful establishments have been founded and built upon the mechanical abilities of some person or persons whose skill formed a base upon which the business was reared, and that true skill is the element which must in the end lead to permanent success. The material and the labour which make up the first cost of machines are, taking an average of various classes, nearly equally divided; labour being in excess for the finer class of machinery, and the material in excess for the coarser kinds of work. The material is presumed to be purchased at the same rates by those of inferior skill as by those that are well skilled, so that the difference in the first, or manufacturing cost of machinery, is determined mainly by skill.