ONE: On this principle the heavens and Nature hang. This is that best life which we possess during a brief period only, for there it is so always, which with us is impossible. And its activity is pure pleasure; wherefore waking, feeling, and thinking, are the most pleasurable states, on account of which hope and memory exist.... And of all activities theorising is the most delightful and the best, so that if God always has such happiness as we have in our highest moments, it is wonderful, and still more wonderful if he has more.191
FORE:CHAPTER VI. GREEK PHILOSOPHY AND MODERN THOUGHT.Meanwhile, he had a logical machine ready to hand, which could be used with terrible effect against the Platonic Ideas. Any of theseand there were a great numberthat could be brought under one of the last nine categories were at once deprived of all claim to independent existence. Take Equality, for instance. It cannot be discovered outside quantity, and quantity is always predicated of a substance. And the same is true of number, to the utter destruction of the Neo-Pythagorean theory which gave it a separate existence. Moreover, the categories served not only to generalise and combine, but also to specificate and divide. The idea of motion occurs in three of them; in quantity, where it means increase or diminution; in quality, where it means alteration, as from hot to cold, or vice versa; and in place, implying transport from one point to another. The Idea of Good, which stands at the very summit of Platos system, may be traced through all ten categories.242 Thus, the supposed unity and simplicity of such conceptions was shown to be an illusion. Platonism was, in truth, so inconsistent with the notions embodied in common language, that it could not but be condemned by a logic based on those notions.
FORE:Drawings are, in fact, the base of shop system, upon which depends not only the accuracy and uniformity of what is produced, but also, in a great degree, its cost. Complete drawings of whatever is made are now considered indispensable in the best regulated establishments; yet we are not so far removed from a time when most work was made without drawings, but what we may contrast the present system with that which existed but a few years ago, when to construct [76]a new machine was a great undertaking, involving generally many experiments and mistakes.
