ONE:II.Another matter to be considered is that the engineering apprentice, in estimating what he will have to learn, must not lose sight of the fact that what qualifies an engineer of to-day will fall far short of the standard that another generation will fix, and of that period in which his practice will fall. This I mention because it will have much to do with the conceptions that a [9] learner will form of what he sees around him. To anticipate improvement and change is not only the highest power to which a mechanical engineer can hope to attain, but is the key to his success.
THREE:So far we have followed the evolution of Platos philosophy as it may have been effected under the impulse of purely theoretical motives. We have now to consider what form was imposed on it by the more imperious exigencies of practical experience. Here, again, we find Plato taking up and continuing the work of Socrates, but on a vastly greater scale. There was, indeed, a kind of pre-established harmony between the expression of thought on the one hand and the increasing need for its application to life on the other. For the spread of public corruption had gone on pari passu with the development of philosophy. The teaching of Socrates was addressed to individuals, and dealt chiefly with private morality. On other points he was content to accept the law of the land and the established political constitution as sufficiently safe guides. He was not accustomed to see them defied or perverted into instruments of selfish aggrandisement; nor, apparently, had the possibility of such a contingency occurred to him. Still less did he imagine that all social institutions then existing were radically wrong. Hence the personal virtues held a more important place in his system than the social virtues. His attacks were directed230 against slothfulness and self-indulgence, against the ignorant temerity which hurried some young men into politics before their education was finished, and the timidity or fastidiousness which prevented others from discharging the highest duties of citizenship. Nor, in accepting the popular religion of his time, had he any suspicion that its sanctions might be invoked on behalf of successful violence and fraud. We have already shown how differently Plato felt towards his age, and how much deeper as well as more shameless was the demoralisation with which he set himself to contend. It must also be remembered how judicial proceedings had come to overshadow every other public interest; and how the highest culture of the time had, at least in his eyes, become identified with the systematic perversion of truth and right. These considerations will explain why Greek philosophy, while moving on a higher plane, passed through the same orbit which had been previously described by Greek poetry. Precisely as the lessons of moderation in Homer had been followed by the lessons of justice in Aeschylus, precisely as the religion which was a selfish traffic between gods and men, and had little to tell of a life beyond the grave, was replaced by the nobler faith in a divine guardianship of morality and a retributive judgment after deathso also did the Socratic ethics and the Socratic theology lead to a system which made justice the essence of morality and religion its everlasting consecration.
THREE:The mission house had become a sanctuary for a good many people. As bread was lacking, two brothers fried pancakes all day long and distributed them among the numberless persons who asked for food. Among these were people who a few days earlier belonged to the well-to-do, but who saw their business, in which often more than their own capital was invested, wrecked by fire, and were now obliged to appeal to the charity of these monks. Indeed during the first weeks after that terrible event many starved, and I assisted often at the distribution of the pancakes, because they were short-handed.
THREE:Chewing gum? Jeff was startled. Swiftly he strode across the dimly sunlit floor, got onto the forward step, peered into the cockpit."I hope they get him," Leona said between her teeth. "I hope they get him. And may they keep him for the rest of his life."
