ONE:We now turn to Sir A. Grant, who, as was mentioned at371 the beginning of the last chapter, makes Aristotle a supporter of the late Prof. Ferrier. We will state the learned Principals view in his own words:
TWO:Shaping machines as machine tools occupy a middle place between planing and slotting machines; their movements correspond more to those of slotting machines, while the operation of the tools is the same as in planing. Some of the advantages of shaping over planing machines for certain kinds of work are, because of the greater facilities afforded for presenting and holding small pieces, or those of irregular shape; the supports or tables having both vertical and horizontal faces to which pieces may be fastened, and the convenience of the mechanism for adjusting and feeding tools.
ONE:
TWO:Moreover, we have not here to consider what was the average level of sentiment and practice among the Greeks; we have to study what alone was of importance for the races which came under their tuition, and that is the highest moral judgment to which they rose. Now, the deliberate verdict of their philosophy on the relation between beauty and virtue is contained in the following passage from Platos Laws:
ONE:"I can hear quite well that you are German, and if you were a Netherlander you would not venture on a bike at this moment. If you come here to seize my bikes, I'll deliver them, for I cannot do anything against that, but I refuse to sell them of my own free-will."
TWO:Grinding, no doubt, if traced to the principles that lie at the bottom, is nothing more than a cutting process, in which the edges employed are harder than any material that can be made into cutters, the edges firmly supported by being imbedded into a mass as the particles of sand are in grindstones, or the particles of emery in emery wheels.Consistency is, indeed, the one word which, better than any other, expresses the whole character of Socrates, and the whole of philosophy as well. Here the supreme conception153 of mind reappears under its most rigorous, but, at the same time, its most beneficent aspect. It is the temperance which no allurement can surprise; the fortitude which no terror can break through; the justice which eliminates all personal considerations, egoistic and altruistic alike; the truthfulness which, with exactest harmony, fits words to meanings, meanings to thoughts, and thoughts to things; the logic which will tolerate no self-contradiction; the conviction which seeks for no acceptance unwon by reason; the liberalism which works through free agencies for freedom; the love which wills anothers good for that others sake alone.98 It was the intellectual passion for consistency which made Socrates so great and which fused his life into a flawless whole; but it was an unconscious motive power, and therefore he attributed to mere knowledge what knowledge alone could not supply. A clear perception of right cannot by itself secure the obedience of our will. High principles are not of any value, except to those in whom a discrepancy between practice and profession produces the sharpest anguish of which their nature is capable; a feeling like, though immeasurably stronger than, that which women of exquisite sensibility experience when they see a candle set crooked or a table-cover awry. How moral laws have come to be established, and why they prescribe or prohibit certain classes of actions, are questions which still divide the schools, though with an increasing consensus of authority on the utilitarian side: their ultimate sanctionthat which, whatever they are, makes obedience to them truly moralcan hardly be sought elsewhere than in the same consciousness of logical stringency that determines, or should determine, our abstract beliefs.
