ONE:It seems hard to deprive engineering pursuits of the romance that is often attached to the business, and bring it down to a matter of commercial gain; but it is best to deal with facts, especially when such facts have an immediate bearing upon the general object in view. There is no intention in these remarks of disparaging the works of many noble men, who have given their means, their time, and sometimes their lives, to the advancement of the industrial arts, without hope or desire of any other reward than the satisfaction of having performed a duty; but we are dealing with facts, and no false colouring should prevent a learner from forming practical estimates of practical matters.CHAPTER V
THREE: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.
THREE:We may also suspect that Plato was dissatisfied not only with the positive results obtained by Socrates, but also with the Socratic method of constructing general definitions. To rise from the part to the whole, from particular instances to general notions, was a popular rather than a scientific process; and sometimes it only amounted to taking the current explanations and modifying them to suit the exigencies of ordinary experience. The resulting definitions could never be more than tentative, and a skilful dialectician could always upset them by producing an unlooked-for exception, or by discovering an ambiguity in the terms by which they were conveyed."Let us get in," she said hoarsely. "A cold bath, to say nothing of a deep, deep drink. I want brandy, a lot of brandy, and soda water. Is the coast clear?"
THREE:The division of matter into minute and indestructible particles served admirably to account for the gradual formation and disappearance of bodies without necessitating the help of a creator. But the infinities assumed as a condition of atomism were of even greater importance. Where time and space are unlimited, the quantity of matter must be equally unlimited, otherwise, being composed of loose particles, it would long since have been dissipated and lost in the83 surrounding void. Now, given infinite time and space, and infinite atoms capable of combining with one another in various ways, all possible combinations must already have been tried, not once or twice, but infinitely often. Of such combinations, that which best fulfils the conditions of mechanical stability will last the longest, and, without being designed, will present all the characters of design. And this, according to Epicurus, is how the actual frame of things comes to be what it is. Nor was it only the world as a whole that he explained by the theory of a single happy accident occurring after a multitude of fortuitous experiments. The same process repeats itself on a smaller scale in the production of particular compounds. All sorts of living bodies were originally throw up from the earths bosom, but many of them instantly perished, not being provided with the means of nutrition, propagation, or self-defence. In like manner we are enabled to recall a particular thought at pleasure, because innumerable images are continually passing through the mind, none of which comes into the foreground of consciousness until attention is fixed on it; though how we come to distinguish it from the rest is not explained. So also, only those societies survived and became civilised where contracts were faithfully observed. All kinds of wild beasts have at different times been employed in war, just as horses and elephants are now, but on trial were found unmanageable and given up.162"But what can I suggest? This thing has taken me utterly by surprise. The only thing is to carry that thing back into the street and lay him down where you found him. A policeman saw him leave the house. It will be thought that he had a fit in the street, and we shall not be suspected."
