FORE:The obligations of justice come next. They are summed up in two precepts that leave nothing to be desired: the first is to do no harm except in self-defence; the second, to bear our share in a perpetual exchange of good offices. And the foundation of justice is rightly placed in the faithful fulfilment of contractsan idea perhaps suggested by Epicurus.63 The virtue of fortitude is treated with similar breadth, and so interpreted as to cover the whole field of conduct, being identified not only with fearlessness in the face of danger, but with the energetic performance of every duty. In a word, it is opposed quite as much to slothfulness and irresolution as to physical timidity.64 Temperance preserves its old meaning of a reasonable restraint exercised over the animal passions and desires; and furthermore, it receives a very rich significance as the quality by which we are enabled to discern and act up to the part assigned to us in life by natural endowment, social position, and individual choice. But this, as one of the most important ideas contributed by Stoicism to subsequent thought, must be reserved for separate discussion in the following section.
FORE:CHAPTER III. THE SCEPTICS AND ECLECTICS: GREEK PHILOSOPHY IN ROME.
FORE:Neither for aught that brings
THREE:CHAPTER V. THE OBJECT OF MECHANICAL INDUSTRY.
THREE:It has been the object thus far to show that machines, processes, and mechanical manipulation generally may be systematised and generalised to a greater or less extent, and that a failure to reduce mechanical manipulation and machine construction to certain rules and principles can mainly be ascribed to our want of knowledge, and not to any inherent difficulty or condition which prevents such solution. The same proposition is applicable to invention, with the difference that invention, in its true sense, may admit of generalisation more readily than machine processes.This is not making the percipi of objects their esse. Again, in the eighth chapter he tells us that the soul is in a certain way (π??) all things, since all things are either sensible or cogitable; and then he proceeds to explain what is meant by372 in a certain way. Sense and knowledge are distributed over things in such wise that their possibility is the possibility, and their actuality the actuality, of the things. They must, then, be either the things themselves or their forms. But the things themselves they are surely not, for the stone is not in the soul, but its form. In the Metaphysics, Aristotle expresses himself to the same effect, but even more explicitly. Criticising the Protagorean doctrine, he reduces it to an absurdity by urging that if there were nothing but sensibles, then nothing at all could exist in the absence of animated beings, for without them there would be no sensation. He admits that in the case supposed there would be neither feelings nor felt objects, since these presuppose a sentient subject; but adds, that for the substances (τ? ?ποκε?μενα) which produce the feeling not to exist is impossible; for there is something else besides the feeling which must necessarily exist before it.268 And immediately afterwards he clinches the argument by observing that if appearances were the only truth, there would be no independent existences, and everything would be relative, since appearances exist only in relation to some one to whom they appear. Now we need hardly say that this universal relativity was precisely what Ferrier contended for.
