Professor John Sweet of Cornell University, in America, while delivering an address to the mechanical engineering classes, during the same year, made use of the following words: "It is [5] not what you 'know' that you will be paid for; it is what you can 'perform,' that must measure the value of what you learn here." These few words contain a truth which deserves to be earnestly considered by every student engineer or apprentice; as a maxim it will come forth and apply to nearly everything in subsequent practice.
All soldiers and officers took the siege of the great fortress calmly, convinced that at the most it would be able to hold out for very few days. Reliable information soon gave me the same impression, although I had wished it might have been quite different. When I left the scene of the fight all the forts from Waelhem to St. Cathrine-Waver had been silenced and in the hands of the Germans, who would soon attack the inner circle of forts.
FORE:I have mentioned already that the German autho224rities had ordered a so-called inquiry about what happened at Landen. As the result of this inquiry the press of all neutral countries had the following two official communications wired to them:Gilbert Lawrence had put away his books and papers with the air of a man who means to take a holiday. He did not seem in the least surprised.
Personally, we know more about Aristotle than about any other Greek philosopher of the classic period; but what we know does not amount to much. It is little more than the skeleton of a life, a bald enumeration of names and dates and places, with a few more or less doubtful anecdotes interspersed. These we shall now relate, together with whatever inferences the facts seem to warrant. Aristotle was born 384 B.C., at Stageira, a Greek colony in Thrace. It is remarkable that every single Greek thinker of note, Socrates and Plato alone281 excepted, came from the confines of Hellenedom and barbarism. It has been conjectured by Auguste Comte, we know not with how much reason, that religious traditions were weaker in the colonies than in the parent states, and thus allowed freer play to independent speculation. Perhaps, also, the accumulation of wealth was more rapid, thus affording greater leisure for thought; while the pettiness of political life liberated a fund of intellectual energy, which in more powerful communities might have been devoted to the service of the State. Left an orphan in early youth, Aristotle was brought up by one Proxenus, to whose son, Nicanor, he afterwards repaid the debt of gratitude. In his eighteenth year he settled at Athens, and attended the school of Plato until the death of that philosopher twenty years afterwards. It is not clear whether the younger thinker was quite conscious of his vast intellectual debt to the elder, and he continually emphasises the points on which they differ; but personally his feeling towards the master was one of deep reverence and affection. In some beautiful lines, still extant, he speaks of an altar of solemn friendship dedicated to one of whom the bad should not speak even in praise; who alone, or who first among mortals, proved by his own life and by his system, that goodness and happiness go hand in hand; and it is generally agreed that the reference can only be to Plato. Again, in his Ethics, Aristotle expresses reluctance to criticise the ideal theory, because it was held by dear friends of his own; adding the memorable declaration, that to a philosopher truth should be dearer still. What opinion Plato formed of his most illustrious pupil is less certain. According to one tradition, he surnamed Aristotle the Nous of his school. It could, indeed, hardly escape so penetrating an observer that the omnivorous appetite for knowledge, which he regarded as most especially characteristic of the philosophic temperament, possessed this young learner to a degree never before paralleled among the sons of men. He may,282 however, have considered that the Stagirites method of acquiring knowledge was unfavourable to its fresh and vivid apprehension. An expression has been preserved which can hardly be other than genuine, so distinguished is it by that delicate mixture of compliment and satire in which Plato particularly excelled. He is said to have called Aristotles house the house of the reader. The author of the Phaedrus, himself a tolerably voluminous writer, was, like Carlyle, not an admirer of literature. Probably it occurred to him that a philosophical student, who had the privilege of listening to his own lectures, might do better than shut himself up with a heap of manuscripts, away from the human inspiration of social intercourse, and the divine inspiration of solitary thought. We moderns have no reason to regret a habit which has made Aristotles writings a storehouse of ancient speculations; but from a scientific, no less than from an artistic point of view, those works are overloaded with criticisms of earlier opinions, some of them quite undeserving of serious discussion.As I passed a Red Cross Hospital, partly spared, I noticed a Flemish doctor, who first looked at me from the door held ajar, and then came nearer; a strapping young fellow with a black beard. After I had made myself known as a Netherlander, he was clearly surprised, and it seemed as though he had a lot to ask or to tell. I expected to hear a torrent of abuse against the Huns, who had destroyed everything, and murdered so many innocent119 people, or a lament about the valuable treasures of the library, which also had not been spared; but no, other thoughts occupied his mind. With a slightly trembling voice he asked:Nor deem I that she comes as his ally,40Bruce's heart beat a little faster as he heard a scuffling on the step and the muffled rattle of a latchkey in the door. There was a breath of welcome fresh air in the stuffy place, the impact of two bodies, and Lawrence rushed upon the newcomer. There was a muttered curse and a fall.
