TWO:"You needn't say any more," Prout said crisply. "That's the man. You changed the gold for the victim of the Corner House tragedy. Got the numbers?"
THREE:"Don't you know then whether there are Belgian military in Vroenhoven?"
TWO:"Oh no! That is impossible, and, after all, we are not afraid of Japan either. You had better write in your paper that we are not afraid of anything excepting Montenegro. And you may also inform your readers that it is better for Netherlanders not to cross the frontier, as we are going to apply much stricter measures. For we have evidence that those people from Vis and other106 villages who fled to The Netherlands are returning with forged papers, in order to shoot at us. And now you may go, but back to Maastricht at once."In reality, Stoicism was not, like the older Greek philosophies, a creation of individual genius. It bears the character of a compilation both on its first exposition and on its final completion. Polemo, who had been a fine gentleman before he became a philosopher, taunted Zeno with filching his opinions from every quarter, like the cunning little Phoenician trader that he was.18 And it was said that the seven hundred treatises of Chrysippus would be reduced to a blank if everything that he had borrowed from others were to be erased. He seems, indeed, to have been the father of review-writers, and to have used the reviewers right of transcription with more than modern license. Nearly a whole tragedy of Euripides reappeared in one of his articles, and a wit on being asked what he was reading, replied, the Medea of Chrysippus.19
TWO:"Really, in all sincerity," he said, "no danger need be feared. I should be very grateful if the newspapers in The Netherlands would draw attention to the following promises which the German authorities gave me, and authorised me to make in their name:"Are they bad?" Lady Longmere asked quizzically?
TWO:But, towards the close of the sixteenth century, the time for amassing observations was past, no further progress being possible until the observations already recorded were interpreted aright. The just instinct of science perceived this; and for nearly a century after Cesalpino no addition of any magnitude was made to what Bacon called History, while mens conceptions of natural law were undergoing a radical transformation.544 To choose such a time for developing the Aristotelian philosophy was peculiarly unfortunate; for that philosophy had become, both on its good and on its bad side, an obstacle to progress, by encouraging studies which were not wanted, and by fostering a spirit of opposition to the Copernican astronomy.Bruce hesitated for a moment. But why not? The man was wealthy, and the picture was worth half what he asked, perhaps more, for experts are not always correct. And 200 would mean the beginning of the furnishing of the new house. Dim visions of a happy honeymoon rose before him.
Standard gauging implements were introduced about the year 1840, by the celebrated Swiss engineer, John G. Bodmer, a [148]man who for many reasons deserves to be considered as the founder of machine tool manufacture. He not only employed gauges in his works to secure duplicate dimensions, but also invented and put in use many other reforms in manipulation; among these may be mentioned the decimal or metrical division of measures, a system of detail drawings classified by symbols, the mode of calculating wheels by diametric pitch, with many other things which characterise the best modern practice."But, madame, I am not German; I am a Netherlander. I should...."Politeness is as indispensable to a learner in a machine shop as it is to a gentleman in society. The character of the courtesy may be modified to suit the circumstances and the person, but still it is courtesy. An apprentice may understand differential calculus, but a workman may understand how to bore a steam cylinder; and in the workman's estimation a problem in calculus is a trivial thing to understand compared with the boring of a steam engine cylinder. Under these circumstances, if a workman is not allowed to balance some of his knowledge against politeness, an apprentice is placed at a disadvantage.In 347 Plato died, leaving his nephew Speusippus to succeed him in the headship of the Academy. Aristotle then left Athens, accompanied by another Platonist, Xenocrates, a circumstance tending to prove that his relations with the school continued to be of a cordial character. The two settled in Atarneus, at the invitation of its tyrant Hermeias, an old fellow-student from the Academy. Hermeias was a eunuch who had risen from the position of a slave to that of vizier, and then, after his masters death, to the possession of supreme power. Three years subsequently a still more abrupt turn of fortune brought his adventurous career to a close. Like Polycrates, he was treacherously seized and crucified by order of the Persian Government. Aristotle, who had married Pythias, his deceased patrons niece, fled with her to Mityln. Always grateful, and singularly enthusiastic in his attachments, he celebrated the memory of Hermeias in a manner which gave great offence to the religious sentiment of Hellas, by dedicating a statue to him at Delphi, and composing an elegy, still extant, in which he compares the eunuch-despot to Heracles, the Dioscuri, Achilles, and Ajax; and promises him immortality from the Muses in honour of Xenian Zeus.One symptom of this reaction was the fashionable archaism of the Augustan age, the tendency to despise whatever was new in literature, and to exalt whatever was old. It is well known how feelingly Horace complains of a movement which was used to damage his own reputation as a poet;309 but what seems to have escaped observation is, that this protest against the literary archaism of his contemporaries is only one symptom of a much profounder division between his philosophy and theirs. He was just as good a patriot as they were, but his sympathies were with the Hellenising aristocracy to which Lucretius and Cicero had belonged, not with the narrow-minded conservatism of the middle classes and the country people. He was a man of progress and free-thought, who accepted the empire for what it might be worth, a Roman Prosper Merime or Sainte-Beuve, whose preference of order to anarchy did not involve any respect for superstitious beliefs simply because they were supported by authority. And this healthy common sense is so much a part of his character, that he sometimes gives his mistresses the benefit of it, warning Leuconoe against the Babylonian soothsayers, and telling202 Phidyle that the gods should be approached not only with sacrifices but with clean hands.310 Yet so strong was the spirit of the age, that the sceptical poet occasionally feels himself obliged to second or to applaud the work of restoration undertaken by Augustus, and to augur from it, with more or less sincerity, a reformation in private life.311 And even the frivolous Ovid may be supposed to have had the same object in view when composing his Fasti.