Just outside Tongres I met a fleet of Red Cross cars loaded with wounded. Cavalry escorted them. I was stopped and ordered to go back, as they expected the Belgians to attack Tongres.
I now come to note a matter in connection with draughting to which the attention of learners is earnestly called, and which, if neglected, all else will be useless. I allude to indigestion, and its resultant evils. All sedentary pursuits more or less give rise to this trouble, but none of them so much as draughting. Every condition to promote this derangement exists. When the muscles are at rest, circulation is slow, the mind is intensely occupied, robbing the stomach of its blood and vitality, and, worse than all, the mechanical action of the stomach is usually arrested by leaning over the edge of a board. It is regretted that no good rule can be given to avoid this danger. One who understands the evil may in a degree avert it by applying some of the logic which has been recommended in the study of mechanics. If anything tends to induce indigestion, its opposite tends the other way, and may arrest it; if stooping over a board interferes with the action of the digestive organs, leaning back does the opposite; it is therefore best to have a desk as high as possible, stand when at work, and cultivate a constant habit of straightening up and throwing the shoulders back, and if possible, take brief intervals of vigorous exercise. Like rating the horse-power of a steam-engine, by multiplying the force into the velocity, the capacity of a man can be estimated by multiplying his mental acquirements into his vitality.
FORE:Yet, while the Stoics were far from anticipating the methods of modern Utilitarianism, they were, in a certain sense, strict Utilitariansthat is to say, they measured the goodness or badness of actions by their consequences; in other words, by39 their bearing on the supposed interest of the individual or of the community. They did not, it is true, identify interest with pleasure or the absence of pain; but although, in our time, Hedonism and Utilitarianism are, for convenience, treated as interchangeable terms, they need not necessarily be so. If any one choose to regard bodily strength, health, wealth, beauty, intellect, knowledge, or even simple existence, as the highest good and the end conduciveness to which determines the morality of actions, he is a Utilitarian; and, even if it could be shown that a maximum of happiness would be ensured by the attainment of his end, he would not on that account become a Hedonist. Now it is certain that the early Stoics, at least, regarded the preservation of the human race as an end which rightfully took precedence of every other consideration; and, like Charles Austin, they sometimes pushed their principles to paradoxical or offensive extremes, apparently for no other purpose than that of affronting the common feelings of mankind,84 without remembering that such feelings were likely to represent embodied experiences of utility. Thusapart from their communistic theoriesthey were fond of specifying the circumstances in which incest would become legitimate; and they are said not only to have sanctioned cannibalism in cases of extreme necessity, but even to have recommended its introduction as a substitute for burial or cremation; although this, we may hope, was rather a grim illustration of what they meant by moral indifference than a serious practical suggestion.85
A distinct parallelism may be traced in the lines of evolution along which we have accompanied our two opposing schools. While the Academicians were coming over to the Stoic theory of cognition, the Stoics themselves were moving in the same general direction, and seeking for an external reality more in consonance with their notions of certainty than the philosophy of their first teachers could supply. For, as originally constituted, Stoicism included a large element of scepticism, which must often have laid its advocates open to the charge of inconsistency from those who accepted the same principle in a more undiluted form. The Heracleitean flux adopted by Zeno as the physical basis of his system, was164 much better suited to a sceptical than to a dogmatic philosophy, as the use to which it was put by Protagoras and Plato sufficiently proved; and this was probably the reason why Bothus and Panaetius partially discarded it in favour of a more stable cosmology. The dialectical studies of the school also tended to suggest more difficulties than they could remove. The comprehensive systematisation of Chrysippus, like that of Plato and Aristotle, had for its object the illustration of each topic from every point of view, and especially from the negative as well as from the positive side. The consequence was that his indefatigable erudition had collected a great number of logical puzzles which he had either neglected or found himself unable to solve. There would, therefore, be a growing inclination to substitute a literary and rhetorical for a logical training: and as we shall presently see, there was an extraneous influence acting in the same direction. Finally, the rigour of Stoic morality had been strained to such a pitch that its professors were driven to admit the complete ideality of virtue. Their sage had never shown himself on earth, at least within the historical period; and the whole world of human interests being, from the rational point of view, either a delusion or a failure, stood in permanent contradiction to their optimistic theory of Nature. The Sceptics were quite aware of this practical approximation to their own views, and sometimes took advantage of it to turn the tables on their opponents with telling effect. Thus, on the occasion of that philosophical embassy with an account of which the present chapter began, when a noble Roman playfully observed to Carneades, You must think that I am not a Praetor as I am not a sage, and that Rome is neither a city nor a state, the great Sceptic replied, turning to his colleague Diogenes, That is what my Stoic friend here would say.262 And Plutarch, in two sharp attacks on the Stoics, written from the Academic point of view, and probably165 compiled from documents of a much earlier period,263 charges them with outraging common sense by their wholesale practical negations, to at least as great an extent as the Sceptics outraged it by their suspense of judgment. How the ethical system of Stoicism was modified so as to meet these criticisms has been related in a former chapter; and we have just seen how Posidonius, by his partial return to the Platonic psychology, with its division between reason and impulse, contributed to a still further change in the same conciliatory sense.Balmayne stopped to hear no more, but hurried quickly down the stairs.It was very cold that evening, and the outposts at Heverlee had all wrapped themselves up in blankets. Once or twice we were stopped, but the password of my escort removed all difficulties.Wheres the one who was on the amphibian wing? Larry wondered.
