ONE:I have witnessed all the people during the very earliest days of the war. I came to Lige, passing between the forts, as described already. I was in Lixhe when the pontoon bridge was wrecked repeatedly by Fort Pontisse; I stayed at Vis three times before the destruction began, and I was there when the charming townlet was wrecked by fire; and in Louvain I have been dragged from my bed by six soldiers and arrested, when the whole town was still ablaze.
THREE:From the garret-window of the farm-house I followed the fierce battle for another half-hour, and saw that the Germans suffered enormous losses, but achieved no gains. At last I had to leave this place too, because shells fell again quite near to the house. I stayed another ten minutes near an ambulance, where they were quite unable to attend to the numerous wounded men. Most of them got an emergency dressing, and were advised to go higher up and try to get better attention there.
THREE:"Well, I study you. Then I begin to see my way. It was only the kind of idea that would creep into the brain of a novelist who does not scruple to endow even his most intimate friends with ferocious qualities for business purposes. But I allowed myself to think that the reason why you had come to Lytton Avenue was because you were in some way interested in the Corner House. There you have the first faint indication of the shaping of the story.And Isidore pulled at his cigar thoughtfully. He seemed so strong and confident that Hetty was strangely comforted.
THREE:The Epicurean philosophy of external Nature was used as an instrument for destroying the uncomfortable belief in Divine Providence. The Epicurean philosophy of mind was used to destroy the still more uncomfortable belief in mans immortality. As opinions then stood, the task was a comparatively easy one. In our discussion of Stoicism, we observed that the spiritualism of Plato and Aristotle was far before their age, and was not accepted or even understood by their countrymen for a long time to come. Moreover, Aristotle did not agree with his master in thinking that the personal eternity of the soul followed from its immateriality. The belief of the Stoics in a prolongation of individual existence until the destruction of all created things by fire, was, even in that very limited form, inconsistent with their avowed materialism, and had absolutely no influence on their practical89 convictions. Thus Platos arguments were alone worth considering. For Epicurus, the whole question was virtually settled by the principle, which he held in common with the Stoics, that nothing exists but matter, its attributes, and its relations. He accepted, it is true, the duality of soul and body, agreeing, in this respect also, with the Stoics and the earlier physicists; and the familiar antithesis of flesh and spirit is a survival of his favourite phraseology;173 but this very term flesh was employed to cover the assumption that the body to which he applied it differed not in substance but in composition from its animating principle. The latter, a rather complex aggregate, consists proximately of four distinct elements, imagined, apparently, for the purpose of explaining its various functions, and, in the last analysis, of very fine and mobile atoms.174 When so much had been granted, it naturally followed that the soul was only held together by the body, and was immediately dissolved on being separated from ita conclusion still further strengthened by the manifest dependence of psychic on corporeal activities throughout the period of their joint existence. Thus all terrors arising from the apprehension of future torments were summarily dispelled.
