ONE:The first and, perhaps, the most important matter of all in founding engineering works is that of arrangement. As a commercial consideration affecting the cost of manipulation, and the expense of handling material, the arrangement of an establishment may determine, in a large degree, the profits that may be earned, and, as explained in a previous place, upon this matter of profits depends the success of such works.
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THREE:Before the ideas which we have passed in review could go forth on their world-conquering mission, it was necessary, not only that Socrates should die, but that his philosophy should die also, by being absorbed into the more splendid generalisations of Platos system. That system has, for some time past, been made an object of close study in our most famous seats of learning, and a certain acquaintance with it has almost become part of a liberal education in England. No170 better source of inspiration, combined with discipline, could be found; but we shall understand and appreciate Plato still better by first extricating the nucleus round which his speculations have gathered in successive deposits, and this we can only do with the help of Xenophon, whose little work also well deserves attention for the sake of its own chaste and candid beauty. The relation in which it stands to the Platonic writings may be symbolised by an example familiar to the experience of every traveller. As sometimes, in visiting a Gothic cathedral, we are led through the wonders of the more modern edificeunder soaring arches, over tesselated pavements, and between long rows of clustered columns, past frescoed walls, storied windows, carven pulpits, and sepulchral monuments, with their endless wealth of mythologic imagerydown into the oldest portion of any, the bare stern crypt, severe with the simplicity of early art, resting on pillars taken from an ancient temple, and enclosing the tomb of some martyred saint, to whose glorified spirit an office of perpetual intercession before the mercy-seat is assigned, and in whose honour all that external magnificence has been piled up; so also we pass through the manifold and marvellous constructions of Platos imagination to that austere memorial where Xenophon has enshrined with pious care, under the great primary divisions of old Hellenic virtue, an authentic reliquary of one standing foremost among those who, having worked out their own deliverance from the powers of error and evil, would not be saved alone, but published the secret of redemption though death were the penalty of its disclosure; and who, by their transmitted influence, even more than by their eternal example, are still contributing to the progressive development of all that is most rational, most consistent, most social, and therefore most truly human in ourselves.
THREE: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 masters 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 Platos 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 desireof 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.
THREE:
