Antwerp had suffered from the horror of war. The bombardment had destroyed many beautiful quarters almost entirely, and even damaged badly a number of hospitals. Of course the loss of many lives had to be deplored.
"That is a word that does no harm," Leona said. "What have I done?""No one to help me at all?" she pleaded. Her voice was low, but she shook with passion. The big financier growled out that he would trust her to 50. In two minutes this was gone, and the banker made no further sign.
ONE:A Hellene, and an aristocrat as well. Or, using the word in its most comprehensive sense, we may say that he was an aristocrat all round, a believer in inherent superiorities of race, sex, birth, breeding, and age. Everywhere we find him restlessly searching after the wisest, purest, best, until at last, passing beyond the limits of existence itself, words fail him to describe the absolute ineffable only good, not being and not knowledge, but creating and inspiring both. Thus it came to pass that his hopes of effecting a thorough reform did not lie in an appeal to the masses, but in the selection and198 seclusion from evil influences of a few intelligent youths. Here we may detect a remarkable divergence between him and his master. Socrates, himself a man of the people, did not like to hear the Athenians abused. If they went wrong, it was, he said, the fault of their leaders.126 But according to Plato, it was from the people themselves that corruption originally proceeded, it was they who instilled false lessons into the most intelligent minds, teaching them from their very infancy to prefer show to substance, success to merit, and pleasure to virtue; making the study of popular caprice the sure road to power, and poisoning the very sources of morality by circulating blasphemous stories about the godsstories which represented them as weak, sensual, capricious beings, setting an example of iniquity themselves, and quite willing to pardon it in men on condition of going shares in the spoil. The poets had a great deal to do with the manufacture of these discreditable myths; and towards poets as a class Plato entertained feelings of mingled admiration and contempt. As an artist, he was powerfully attracted by the beauty of their works; as a theologian, he believed them to be the channels of divine inspiration, and sometimes also the guardians of a sacred tradition; but as a critic, he was shocked at their incapacity to explain the meaning of their own works, especially when it was coupled with ridiculous pretensions to omniscience; and he regarded the imitative character of their productions as illustrating, in a particularly flagrant manner, that substitution of appearance for reality which, according to his philosophy, was the deepest source of error and evil.
ONE:On the other hand, if Stoicism did not make men pitiful, it made them infinitely forgiving. Various causes conspired to bring about this result. If all are sinners, and if all sins are equal, no one has a right, under pretence of superior virtue, to cast a stone at his fellows. Such is the point of view insisted on with especial emphasis by Seneca, who, more perhaps than other philosophers, had reason to be conscious how far his practice fell short of his professions.94 But, speaking generally, pride was the very last fault with which the Stoics could be charged. Both in ancient and modern times, satirists have been prone to assume that every disciple of the Porch, in describing his ideal of a wise man, was actually describing himself. No misconception could be more complete. It is like supposing that, because Christ commanded his followers to be perfect even as their heavenly Father is perfect, every Christian for that reason thinks himself equal43 to God. The wise man of the Stoics had, by their own acknowledgment, never been realised at all; he had only been approached by three characters, Socrates, Antisthenes, and Diogenes.95 May the sage fall in love? asked a young man of Panaetius. What the sage may do, replied the master, is a question to be considered at some future time. Meanwhile, you and I, who are very far from being sages, had better take care not to let ourselves become the slaves of a degrading passion.96Meanwhile the scepticism of Protagoras had not been entirely absorbed into the systems of his rivals, but continued to exist as an independent tradition, or in association with a simpler philosophy. The famous school of Megara, about which, unfortunately, we have received very little direct136 information, was nominally a development of the Socratic teaching on its logical side, as the Cynic and Cyrenaic schools were on its ethical side, but like them also, it seems to have a more real connexion with the great impulse previously given to speculation by the Sophists. At any rate, we chiefly hear of the Megarians as having denied the possibility of definition, to which Socrates attached so much importance, and as framing questions not susceptible of a categorical answer,an evident satire on the Socratic method of eliciting the truth by cross-examination.224 What they really derived from Socrates seems to have been his mental concentration and independence of external circumstances. Here they closely resembled the Cynics, as also in their contempt for formal logic; but while Antisthenes found a sanction for his indifference and impassivity in the order of nature, their chief representative, Stilpo, achieved the same result by pushing the sceptical principle to consequences from which even the Cyrenaics would have shrunk. Denying the possibility of attaching a predicate to a subject, he seems, in like manner, to have isolated the mind from what are called its affections, or, at least, to have made this isolation his ideal of the good. Even the Stoics did not go to such a length; and Seneca distinguishes himself from the followers of Stilpo by saying, Our sage feels trouble while he overcomes it, whereas theirs does not feel it at all.225
TWO:"From Miss Lawrence's evidence at the first inquest. Also the evidence of the reporter. The car was draped, they said. In places it shone. Those places were where the lead was rubbed off; you could make the car sombre black and brilliantly light at will.For another thing, Sandy went on, anybody could write that letter Jeff showed meand who is Jeff, when all is said and done?
TWO:"Because you loved your wife and respected her memory," said Lawrence.The appeal in the thrilling tender voice touched him. He took the slim figure in his arms and kissed the red lips.
TWO:He paused and looked down. The smile faded from Leona's face.The prevailing custom of casting machine frames in one piece, or in as few pieces as possible, leads to a great deal of bar-boring, most of which can be performed accurately enough by boring bars supported in and fed through bearings. By setting up temporary bearings to support boring-bars, and improvising means of driving and feeding, most of the boring on machine frames can be performed on floors or sole plates and independent of boring machines and lathes. There are but few cases in which the importance of studying the principles of tool action is more clearly demonstrated than in this matter of boring; even long practical experience seldom leads to a thorough understanding of the [139] various problems which it involves.
THREE:"Tonight. Impossible. There are matters to be got ready. My absence at this hour would attract attention. If I could only be in two places at once!"
THREE:If ruthless hearts could claim her fellowship.56(1.) What is principal among the details of steam machinery?(2.) What has been the most important improvement recently made in steam machinery?(3.) What has been the result of expansive engines generally stated?(4.) Why has water proved the most successful among various expansive substances employed to develop power?(5.) Why does a condensing engine develop more power than a non-condensing one?(6.) How far back from its development into power can heat be traced as an element in nature?(7.) Has the property of combustion a common source in all substances?
