THREE:Let us now pass over fourteen centuries and see to what results the doctrine taught by Plato himself led when it had entered into an alliance with the superstitions which he denounced. Our illustration shall be taken from a sainted hero of the Catholic Church. In a sermon preached before Pope Nicholas II. at Arezzo, the famous Hildebrand, afterwards Gregory VII., relates the following story:Nevertheless Bacons own attitude towards final causes differs essentially from Descartes. The French mathematician, had he spoken his whole mind, would probably have denied their existence altogether. The English reformer fully admits their reality, as, with his Aristotelian theory of Forms, he could hardly avoid doing; and we find that he actually associates the study of final with that of formal causes, assigning both to metaphysics as its peculiar province. This being so, his comparative neglect of the former is most easily explained by the famous comparison of teleological enquiries to vestal virgins, dedicated to the service of God and bearing no offspring; for Mr. Ellis has made it perfectly clear that the barrenness alluded to is not scientific but industrial. Our knowledge is extended when we trace the workings of a divine purpose in Nature; but this is not a kind of knowledge which bears fruit in useful mechanical inventions.553 Bacon probably felt that men would not be very forward to improve on Nature if they believed in the perfection of her works and in their beneficent adaptation to our wants. The teleological spirit was as strong with him as with Aristotle, but it took a different direction. Instead of studying the adaptation of means to ends where it already existed, he wished men to create it for themselves. But the utilitarian tendency, which predominated with Bacon, was quite exceptional with Descartes. Speaking generally, he desired knowledge for its own sake, not as an instrument for the gratification of other wants; and this intellectual disinterestedness was, perhaps, another aspect of the severance effected between thought and matter.
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THREE:"I am as poor as yourself," Balmayne contrived to say.
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THREE:There is no reason to believe that Hippias used his distinction between Nature and convention as an argument for despotism. It would rather appear that, if anything, he and his school desired to establish a more complete equality among men. Others, however, both rhetoricians and practical statesmen, were not slow to draw an opposite conclusion. They saw that where no law was recognised, as between different nations, nothing but violence and the right of the stronger prevailed. It was once believed that aggressions which human law could not reach found no favour with the gods, and dread of the divine displeasure may have done something towards restraining them. But religion had partly been destroyed by the new culture, partly perverted into a sanction for wrong-doing. By what right, it was asked, did Zeus himself reign? Had he not unlawfully dethroned his father, Cronos, and did he not now hold power simply by virtue of superior strength? Similar reasonings were soon applied to the internal government of each state. It was alleged that the ablest citizens could lay claim to uncontrolled supremacy by a title older than any social fiction. Rules of right meant nothing but a permanent conspiracy of the weak to withdraw themselves from the legitimate dominion of their born master, and to bamboozle him into a voluntary surrender of his natural privileges. Sentiments bearing a superficial resemblance to these have occasionally found utterance among ourselves. Nevertheless, it would be most unjust to compare Carlyle and Mr. Froude with Critias and Callicls. We believe that their preference of despotism to representative government is an entire mistake. But we know that with them as with us the good of the governed is the sole end desired. The gentlemen of Athens sought after supreme power only as a means for gratifying their worst passions without let or hindrance; and for that purpose they were ready to ally themselves with every foreign enemy in turn, or to flatter the caprices of the Dmos, if that policy85 promised to answer equally well. The antisocial theories of these young lions, as they were called by their enemies and sometimes by themselves also, do not seem to have been supported by any public teacher. If we are to believe Plato, P?lus, a Sicilian rhetor, did indeed regard Archelaus, the abler Louis Napoleon of his time, with sympathy and envious admiration, but without attempting to justify the crimes of his hero by an appeal to natural law. The corruption of theoretical morality among the paid teachers took a more subtle form. Instead of opposing one principle to another, they held that all law had the same source, being an emanation from the will of the stronger, and exclusively designed to promote his interest. Justice, according to Thrasymachus in the Republic, is anothers good, which is true enough, and to practise it except under compulsion is foolish, which, whatever Grote may say, is a grossly immoral doctrine.
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