TWO:There the German authorities detained me for a full week, by prohibiting me to return: "for the sake of your own safety," they told me courteously. During the day I was busy enough, and in the evenings I enjoyed the pleasant company of the three fathers of the Sacred Heart who had remained in the137 mission house, and with whose photographic instrument I took many a snapshot of the Louvain ruins.V.
THREE:The first acquaintance whom I met on Netherland territory was a Netherland lady married to a Walloon, who kept a large caf at Vis. Before the destruction she had asked me, full of anxiety, whether the Germans would indeed carry out their86 threat and wreck everything. I had comforted her, and answered that I did not think them capable of doing such a thing. Weeping, she came to me, and reminded me of my words. The whole business, in which these young people had invested their slender capital, had been wrecked.The second service of Epicurus was entirely to banish the idea of supernatural interference from the study of natural phenomena. This also was a difficult enterprise in the face of that overwhelming theological reaction begun by Socrates, continued by Plato, and carried to grotesque con115sequences by the Stoics; but, here again, there can be no question of attributing any originality to the philosopher of the Garden. That there either were no gods at all, or that if there were they never meddled with the world, was a common enough opinion in Platos time; and even Aristotles doctrine of a Prime Mover excludes the notion of creation, providence, and miracles altogether. On the other hand, the Epicurean theory of idle gods was irrational in itself, and kept the door open for a return of superstitious beliefs.
THREE:A solid milling cutter must be an accurately finished piece of work, made with more precision than can be expected in the work it is to perform. This accuracy cannot be attained by ordinary processes, because such tools, when tempered, are liable to become distorted in shape, and frequently break. When hardened they must be finished by grinding processes, if intended for any accurate work; in fact, no tools, except gauging implements, involve more expense to prepare, and none are so liable to accident when in use.The relation of Spinozas Substance to its attributes is ambiguous. It is at once their cause, their totality, and their unity. The highly elastic and indefinite term Power helped these various aspects to play into and replace one another according to the requirements of the system. It is associated with the subjective possibility of multiplying imaginary existences to any amount; with the causal energy in which existence originates; and with the expansiveness characteristic alike of Extension and of Thought. For the two known attributes of the universal substance are not simply related to it as co-predicates of a common subject; they severally express its essential Power, and are, to that extent, identical with one another. But when we ask, How do they express Power? the same ambiguity recurs. Substance is revealed through its attributes, as a cause through its effects; as an aggregate through its constituents; and as an abstract notion through its concrete embodiments. Thus Extension and Thought are identical through their very differences, since these illustrate the versatility of their common source, and at the same time jointly contribute to the realisation of its perfection. But, for all practical purposes, Spinoza deals only with the parallelism and resemblance of the attributes. We have to see how he establishes it, and how far he was helped in so doing by the traditions of Greek philosophy.
- Justine Goliyad
- Justine Goliyad
- Justine Goliyad