THREE:The first and, perhaps, the most important matter of all in founding engineering works is that of arrangement. As a commercial consideration affecting the cost of manipulation, and the expense of handling material, the arrangement of an establishment may determine, in a large degree, the profits that may be earned, and, as explained in a previous place, upon this matter of profits depends the success of such works.
THREE:The two elements of error and achievement are so intimately blended and mutually conditioned in the philosophy which we have been reviewing, that to decide on their respective importance is impossible without first deciding on a still larger questionthe value of systematic thought as such, and apart from its actual content. For Aristotle was perhaps the greatest master of systematisation that ever lived. The401 framework and language of science are still, to a great extent, what he made them; and it remains to be seen whether they will ever be completely remodelled. Yet even this gift has not been an unmixed benefit, for it was long used in the service of false doctrines, and it still induces critics to read into the Aristotelian forms truths which they do not really contain. Let us conclude by observing that of all the ancients, or even of all thinkers before the eighteenth century, there is none to whom the methods and results of modern science could so easily be explained. While finding that they reversed his own most cherished convictions on every point, he would still be prepared by his logical studies to appreciate the evidence on which they rest, and by his ardent love of truth to accept them without reserve. Most of all would he welcome our astronomy and our biology with wonder and delight, while viewing the development of modern machinery with much more qualified admiration, and the progress of democracy perhaps with suspicious fear. He who thought that the mind and body of an artisan were alike debased by the exercise of some simple handicraft under the pure bright sky of Greece, what would he have said to the effect wrought on human beings by the noisome, grinding, sunless, soulless drudgery of our factories and mines! How profoundly unfitted would he have deemed its victims to influence those political issues with which the interests of science are every day becoming more vitally connected! Yet slowly, perhaps, and unwillingly, he might be brought to perceive that our industry has been the indispensable basis of our knowledge, as supplying both the material means and the moral ends of its cultivation. He might also learn that there is an even closer relationship between the two: that while the supporters of privilege are leagued for the maintenance of superstition, the workers, and those who advocate their claims to political equality, are leagued for its restraint and overthrow. And if402 he still shrank back from the heat and smoke and turmoil amid which the genius of our age stands, like another Heracleitus, in feverish excitement, by the steam-furnace whence its powers of revolutionary transmutation are derived, we too might reapply the words of the old Ephesian prophet, bidding him enter boldly, for here also there are gods.
THREE:"Von Buelow."
TWO:"With a view to saving myself the loss of many thousand pounds. The money itself would not make much difference to me, but I love my money. To make it is the whole end and aim of my life. Lie to me, deceive me, abuse me, anything you like, and I care nothing. But rob me of money, ah!"Modern literature offers abundant materials for testing Aristotles theory, and the immense majority of critics have decided against it. Even among fairly educated readers few would prefer Molires Ltourdi to his Misanthrope, or Schillers Maria Stuart to Goethes Faust, or Lord Lyttons Lucretia to George Eliots Romola, or Dickenss Tale of Two Cities to the same writers Nicholas Nickleby, or his Great Expectations to his David Copperfield, although in each instance the work named first has the better plot of the two.
TWO:I explained who I was, and was then allowed to come nearer. They were drunk, and with glassy eyes talked about francs-tireurs, the friendship Germans felt for Netherlanders, and so on. One of them entered the still burning corner house and returned with three bottles of wine, one a bottle of Champagne; corks were drawn and one of the bottles handed to me. First I said that I never took wine, then that the doctor had forbidden it; it was of no use. The fellow who held the bottle in front of me got nasty, and shouted: