FORE:But all this time the popular belief in omens had continued unaffected, and had apparently even increased. The peculiar Greek feeling known as Deisidaimonia is first satirised by Theophrastus, who defines it as cowardice with regard to the gods, and gives several amusing instances of the anxiety occasioned by its presenceall connected with the interpretation of omenssuch as Aristophanes could hardly have failed to notice had they been usual in his time. Nor were such fancies confined to the ignorant classes. Although the Stoics cannot be accused of Deisidaimonia, they gave their powerful sanction to the belief in divination, as has been already mentioned in our account of their philosophy. It223 would seem that whatever authority the great oracular centres had lost was simply handed over to lower and more popular forms of the same superstition.It may be noticed that the carriages of some lathes move on what are termed V tracks which project above the top of lathe frames, and that in other lathes the carriages slide on top of the frames with a flat bearing. As these two plans of mounting lathe carriages have led to considerable discussion on the part of engineers, and as its consideration may suggest a plan of analysing other problems of a similar nature, I will notice some of the conditions existing in the two cases, calling the different arrangements by the names of flat shears and track shears.
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FORE:Aristotles work on reproduction is supposed by many to contain a reference to his distinction between the two Reasons, but we are convinced that this is a mistake. What we are told is that at the very first formation of a new being, the vegetative soul, being an exclusively corporeal function, is precontained in the elements furnished by the female; that the sensitive soul is contributed by the male (being, apparently, engendered in the semen by the vital heat of the parent organism); and, finally, that the rational soul, although entirely immaterial, is also carried in with the semen, into which it has first been introduced from without, but where, or when, or how is not more particularly specified.260 But even were the genetic theory in question perfectly cleared up, it would still throw no light on the distinction between active and passive reason, as the latter alone can be understood by the rational soul to which it refers. For we are expressly informedwhat indeed hardly required to be statedthat the embryonic souls exist not in act but in potency.261 It seems, therefore, that Mr. Edwin Wallace is doubly mistaken when he quotes a sentence from this passage in justification of his statement, that Aristotle would seem almost to identify the creative reason with God as the eternal and omnipresent thinker;262 first, because it does not refer to the creative Nous at all; and, secondly, because, if it did, the words would not stand the meaning which he puts upon them.263
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