THREE:Had some delivered in cans early this morningdown at the boathouse, Jeff told him. We can fill up the main tank and get a reserve in my small wing-tanksenough for ten hours altogether.
THREE:Thus the final effect of its communion with the Roman mind was not so much to develope Greek philosophy any further, or to reconcile its warring sects with one another, as to aid in their decomposition by throwing them back on the184 earlier forms whence they had sprung. Accordingly we find that the philosophic activity of Hellas immediately before and after the Christian eraso far as there was any at allconsisted in a revival of the Pythagorean and Cynic schools, accompanied by a corresponding resuscitation of primitive Scepticism. This last takes the shape of a very distinct protest against the fashionable naturalism of the age, just as the scepticism of Protagoras and Gorgiasif our view be correcthad once been called forth by the naturalism of Prodicus and Hippias. The principal representative, if not the founder, of Neo-Scepticism was Aenesidmus, who taught in Alexandria, when we are not informed, but probably after the middle of the first century A.D.291 An avowed disciple of Pyrrho, his object was to reassert the sceptical principle in its original purity, especially as against the Academicians, whom he charged with having first perverted and then completely abandoned it.292 Aenesidmus would hear nothing of probabilities nor of moral certainties. He also claimed to distinguish himself from the Academicians by refusing to assert even so much as that nothing can be asserted; but it appears that, in this point, he had been fully anticipated by Arcesilaus and Carneades.293 For the rest, his own Scepticism recalls the method of Gorgias and Protagoras much more distinctly than the method of the New Academya fresh illustration of the archaic and revivalist tendencies displayed by philosophy at185 this period. In other words, it is not against the reasoning processes that his criticisms are directed, but against the theory of causation on the objective side, and against the credibility of our immediate perceptions on the subjective side.294 But, in both directions, he has worked out the difficulties of the old Sophists with a minuteness and a precision unknown to them; and some of his points have been found worth repeating in a different connexion by modern critics. Thus, in analysing the theory of causation, he draws attention to the plurality of causes as an obstacle to connecting any given consequent with one antecedent more than with another; to the illegitimate assumption that the laws inferred from experience hold good under unknown conditions; to the arbitrary assumption of hypothetical causes not evinced by experience; and to the absurdity of introducing a new difficulty for the purpose of explaining an old one.295 With regard to causation itself, Aenesidmus seems to have resolved it into action and reaction, thus eliminating the condition of186 antecedence and consequence, without which it becomes unintelligible.296
THREE:For loading and unloading carts and waggons, the convenience of the old outside sling is well known; it is also a well-attested fact that accidents rarely happen with sling hoists, although they appear to be less safe than running platforms or lifts. As a general rule, the most dangerous machinery for handling or raising material is that which pretends to dispense with the care and vigilance of attendants, and the safest machinery that which enforces such attention. The condition which leads to danger in hoisting machinery is, that the power employed is opposed to the force of gravity, and as the force of gravity is acting continually, it is always ready to take advantage of the least cessation in the opposing force employed, and thus drag away the weight for which the two forces are contending; as a weight when under the influence of gravity is moved [65] at an accelerated velocity, if gravity becomes the master, the result is generally a serious accident. Lifting may be considered a case wherein the contrivances of man are brought to bear in overcoming or opposing a natural force; the imperfect force of the machinery is liable to accident or interruption, but gravity never fails to act. Acting on every piece of matter in proportion to its weight must be some force opposing and equal to that of gravity; for example, a piece of iron lying on a bench is opposed by the bench and held in resistance to gravity, and to move this piece of iron we have to substitute some opposing force, like that of the hands or lifting mechanism, to overcome gravity.
TWO: