ONE:Near Louvain the train had to stop for another two hours, before it was allowed to enter the station, which was quite close by. I thanked my stars that at last I got rid of my companion, who travelled on to Brussels, whereas I got out at Louvain. It was too late to be allowed to walk in the streets,199 but the commander gave me an escort of two soldiers, who were to take me to the mission house of the Fathers of the Sacred Heart.It is possible, we think, to trace a similar evolution in the history of the Attic drama. The tragedies of Aeschylus resemble the old Ionian philosophy in this, that they are filled with material imagery, and that they deal with remote interests, remote times, and remote places. Sophocles withdraws his action into the subjective sphere, and simultaneously works out a pervading contrast between the illusions by which men are either lulled to false security or racked with needless anguish, and the terrible or consolatory reality to which they finally awaken. We have also, in his well-known irony, in the unconscious self-betrayal of his characters, that subtle evanescent allusiveness to a hidden truth, that gleaming of reality through appearance which constitutes, first the dialectic, then the mythical illustration, and finally the physics of Plato. In Aeschylus also we have the spectacle of sudden and violent vicissitudes, the abasement of insolent prosperity, and the punishment of long successful crime; only with him the characters which attract most interest are not the blind victims, but the accomplices or the confidants of destinythe great figures of a Prometheus, a Darius, an Eteocles, a Clytemnestra, and a Cassandra, who are raised above the common level to an eminence where the secrets of past and future are unfolded to their gaze. Far otherwise with Sophocles. The leading actors in his most characteristic works, Oedipus, Electra, Dejanira, Ajax, and Philoctetes, are surrounded by forces which they can neither control nor understand; moving in a world of illusion, if they help to work out their own destinies it is unconsciously, or even in direct opposition to their own designs.208 Hence in Aeschylus we have something324 like that superb self-confidence which distinguishes a Parmenides and a Heracleitus; in Sophocles that confession of human ignorance which the Athenian philosophers made on their own behalf, or strove to extract from others. Euripides introduces us to another mode of thought, more akin to that which characterises Aristotle. For, although there is abundance of mystery in his tragedies, it has not the profound religious significance of the Sophoclean irony; he uses it rather for romantic and sentimental purposes, for the construction of an intricate plot, or for the creation of pathetic situations. His whole power is thrown into the immediate and detailed representation of living passion, and of the surroundings in which it is displayed, without going far back into its historical antecedents like Aeschylus, or, like Sophocles, into the divine purposes which underlie it. On the other hand, as a Greek writer could not be other than philosophical, he uses particular incidents as an occasion for wide generalisations and dialectical discussions; these, and not the idea of justice or of destiny, being the pedestal on which his figures are set. And it may be noticed as another curious coincidence that, like Aristotle again, he is disposed to criticise his predecessors, or at least one of them, Aeschylus, with some degree of asperity.
THREE:For milling, drilling or boring ordinary work within its range, a lathe is by no means a makeshift tool, but performs these various operations with nearly all the advantages of machines adapted to each purpose. An ingenious workman who understands the adaptation of a modern engine lathe can make almost any kind of light machinery without other tools, except for planing, and may even perform planing when the surfaces are not too large; in this way machinery can be made at an expense not much greater than if a full equipment of different tools is employed. This of course can only be when no division of labour is required, and when one man is to perform all the several processes of turning, drilling, and so on.This problem of whether to move the material or to move the tools in planing, is an old one; both opinion and practice vary to some extent, yet practice is fast settling down into constant rules.
