FORE:

FORE:But the enthusiasm for science, however noble in itself, would not alone have sufficed to mould the Epicurean philosophy into a true work of art. The De Rerum Natura is the greatest of all didactic poems, because it is something more than didactic. Far more truly than any of its Latin successors, it may claim comparison with the epic and dramatic masterpieces of Greece and Christian Europe; and that too not by virtue of any detached passages, however splendid, but by virtue of its composition as a whole. The explanation of this extraordinary success is to be sought in the circumstance that the central interest whence Lucretius works out in all directions is vital rather than merely scientific. The true heroine of his epic is not Nature but universal life��human life in the first instance, then the life of all the lower animals, and even of plants as well. Not only does he bring before us every stage of man��s existence from its first to its last hour106 with a comprehensiveness, a fidelity, and a daring unparalleled in literature; but he exhibits with equal power of portrayal the towered elephants carrying confusion into the ranks of war, or girdling their own native India with a rampart of ivory tusks; the horse with an eagerness for the race that outruns even the impulse of his own swift limbs, or fiercely neighing with distended nostrils on the battlefield; the dog snuffing an imaginary scent, or barking at strange faces in his dreams; the cow sorrowing after her lost heifer; the placid and laborious ox; the flock of pasturing sheep seen far off, like a white spot on some green hill; the tremulous kids and sportive lambs; the new-fledged birds filling all the grove with their fresh songs; the dove with her neck-feathers shifting from ruby-red to sky-blue and emerald-green; the rookery clamouring for wind or rain; the sea birds screaming over the salt waves in search of prey; the snake sloughing its skin; the scaly fishes cleaving their way through the yielding stream; the bee winging its flight from flower to flower; the gnat whose light touch on our faces passes unperceived; the grass refreshed with dew; the trees bursting into sudden life from the young earth, or growing, flourishing, and covering themselves with fruit, dependent, like animals, on heat and moisture for their increase, and glad like them:��all these helping to illustrate with unequalled variety, movement, and picturesqueness the central idea which Lucretius carries always in his mind.

FORE:Descartes�� theory of the universe included, however, something more than extension (or matter) and motion. This was Thought. If we ask whence came the notion of Thought, our philosopher will answer that it was obtained by looking into himself. It was, in reality, obtained by looking into Aristotle, or into some text-book reproducing his metaphysics. But the Platonic element in his system enabled Descartes to isolate Thought much more completely than it had been isolated by Aristotle. To understand this, we must turn once more to the Timaeus. Plato made up his universe from space and Ideas. But the Ideas were too vague or too unintelligible for scientific purposes. Even mediaeval Realists were content to replace them by Aristotle��s much clearer doctrine of Forms. On the other hand, Aristotle��s First Matter was anything but a satisfactory conception. It was a mere abstraction; the390 unknowable residuum left behind when bodies were stripped, in imagination, of all their sensible and cogitable qualities. In other words, there was no Matter actually existing without Form; whereas Form was never so truly itself, never so absolutely existent, as when completely separated from Matter: it then became simple self-consciousness, as in God, or in the reasonable part of the human soul. The revolution wrought by substituting space for Aristotle��s First Matter will now become apparent. Corporeal substance could at once be conceived as existing without the co-operation of Form; and at the same stroke, Form, liberated from its material bonds, sprang back into the subjective sphere, to live henceforward only as pure self-conscious thought.

FORE:A good many lads had been able to escape from Bilsen and the environs to Antwerp; in the aggregate, 500 from this district, and more went every day. They were driven to the Belgian army by all they had seen and experienced. Often one heard women and girls say: "Oh, if I were a man, if I were a boy, I should be in the army to-morrow!"

FORE:This search after a scientific basis for conduct was quite in the spirit of Socrates, but Plato seems to have set very little value on his master��s positive contributions to the systematisation of life. We have seen that the Apologia is purely sceptical in its tendency; and we find a whole group of Dialogues, probably the earliest of Plato��s compositions, marked by the same negative, inconclusive tone. These are commonly spoken of as Socratic, and so no doubt they are in reference to the subjects discussed; but they would be more accurately described as an attempt to turn the Socratic method against its first originator. We know from another source that tem183perance, fortitude, and piety were the chief virtues inculcated and practised by Socrates; while friendship, if not strictly speaking a virtue, was equally with them one of his prime interests in life. It is clear that he considered them the most appropriate and remunerative subjects of philosophical discussion; that he could define their nature to his own satisfaction; and that he had, in fact, defined them as so many varieties of wisdom. Now, Plato has devoted a separate Dialogue to each of the conceptions in question,119 and in each instance he represents Socrates, who is the principal spokesman, as professedly ignorant of the whole subject under discussion, offering no definition of his own (or at least none that he will stand by), but asking his interlocutors for theirs, and pulling it to pieces when it is given. We do, indeed, find a tendency to resolve the virtues into knowledge, and, so far, either to identify them with one another, or to carry them up into the unity of a higher idea. To this extent Plato follows in the footsteps of his master, but a result which had completely satisfied Socrates became the starting-point of a new investigation with his successor. If virtue is knowledge, it must be knowledge of what we most desire��of the good. Thus the original difficulty returns under another form, or rather we have merely restated it in different terms. For, to ask what is temperance or fortitude, is equivalent to asking what is its use. And this was so obvious to Socrates, that, apparently, he never thought of distinguishing between the two questions. But no sooner were they distinguished than his reduction of all morality to a single principle was shown to be illusive. For each specific virtue had been substituted the knowledge of a specific utility, and that was all. Unless the highest good were one, the means by which it was sought could not converge to a single point; nor, according to the new ideas, could their mastery come under the jurisdiction of a single art.

FORE:In his very first essay, Plotinus had hinted at a principle higher and more primordial than the absolute Nous, something with which the soul is connected by the mediation of Nous, just as she herself mediates between Nous and the material world. The notion of such a supreme principle was derived from Plato. In the sixth and seventh books of the Republic, we are told that at the summit of the dialectic series stands an idea to grasp which is the ultimate object of308 all reasoning. Plato calls this the Idea of Good, and describes it as holding a place in the intellectual world analogous to that held by the sun in the physical world. For, just as the sun brings all visible things into being, and also gives the light by which they are seen, so also the Good is not only that by which the objects of knowledge are known, but also that whence their existence is derived, while at the same time itself transcending existence in dignity and power.454"Ay, ay," Maitrank showed his yellow fangs in a grin, "that is true. Go on."