ONE:The famous theses of Gorgias were quoted in a former chapter as an illustration of the tactics pursued by Greek Humanism in its controversy with physical science. They must be noticed again in the present connexion, on account of their bearing on the development of scepticism, and as having inaugurated a method of reasoning often employed in subsequent attacks, directed, not against the whole of knowledge, but against particular parts of it. The scepticism of Protagoras rested on the assumption that there is an external reality from the reaction of which with mind all our perceptions proceed. Neither of these two factors can be known apart from the other, and as both are in a constant flux, our knowledge of the resulting compound at one time does not show what it has been or will be at another time. But Gorgias altogether denied the existence of any objective reality; and he attempted to disprove it by an analytical instead of a synthetic argument, laying down a series of disjunctive propositions, and upsetting the different alternatives in succession. Existence must be either something or nothing, or both together; and if something, it must be either finite or infinite, or both, and either one or many, or both. His argument against an infinite existence is altogether futile; but it serves to illustrate the undeveloped state of reflection at that period. The eternity of the world is confounded with its unlimited extension in space: and this hypothesis, again, is met by the transparent quibble that the world, not being in any one place, must be nowhere or not at all. And the alternative that the world has not always existed is refuted by the unproved assumption, which, apparently, no Greek philosopher ever thought of disputing, that nothing can begin without being caused by something else. Still, however contemptible such reasonings may seem,131 it is obvious that in them we have the first crude form of the famous antinomies by which Kant long afterwards sought to prove the impossibility of a world existing in space and time apart from a percipient subject, and which have since been used to establish in a more general way the unknowability of existence as such. It will also be observed that the sceptical arguments respectively derived from the relativity of thought and from the contradictions inherent in its ultimate products are run together by modern agnostics. But no reason that we can remember has ever been given to show that an idea is necessarily subjective because it is self-contradictory."Or to pawn her jewels," Lady Longmere laughed. "Isidore, why didn't you offer to lend her money on her tiara?"
TWO:In such sciences as rest in any degree upon physical experiment, like chemistry, to experiment without some definite object may be a proper kind of research, and may in the future, as it has in the past, lead to great and useful results; but in mechanics the case is different; the demonstration of the conservation of force, and the relation between force and heat, have supplied the last link in a chain of principles which may be said to comprehend all that we are called upon to deal with in dynamical science, and there remains but little hope of developing anything new or useful by discovery alone. The time has been, and has not yet passed away, when even the most unskilled thought their ability to invent improvements in machinery equal with that of an engineer or skilled mechanic; but this is now changed; new schemes are weighed and tested by scientific standards, in many cases as reliable as actual experiments. A veil of mystery which ignorance of the physical sciences had in former times thrown around the mechanic arts, has been cleared away; chance discovery, or mechanical superstition, if the term may be allowed, has nearly disappeared. Many modern engineers regard their improvements in machinery as the exercise of their profession only, and hesitate about asking for protective grants to secure an exclusive use of that which another person might and often does demonstrate, as often as circumstances call for such improvement. There are of course new articles of manufacture to be discovered, and many improvements in machinery which may be proper subject matter for patent rights; improvements which in all chance would not be made for the term of a patent, except by the inventor; but such cases are rare; and it is fair to assume that unless an invention is one which could not have been regularly deduced from existing data, and one that would not in all probability have been made for a long term of years by any other person than the inventor, such an invention cannot in fairness become the property of an individual without infringing the rights of others. PREFACE
