THREE:Jeff swerved aside on a graveled path, leaving them to aid the caretaker and his mechanic to bring the hydroplane to its mooring and let Larry jump out to join them.
FORE:Thales, of Miletus, an Ionian geometrician and astronomer, about whose age considerable uncertainty prevails, but who seems to have flourished towards the close of the seventh century before our era, is by general consent regarded as the father of Greek physical philosophy. Others before him had attempted to account for the worlds origin, but none like him had traced it back to a purely natural beginning. According to Thales all things have come from water. That8 the earth is entirely enclosed by water above and below as well as all round was perhaps a common notion among the Western Asiatics. It was certainly believed by the Hebrews, as we learn from the accounts of the creation and the flood contained in Genesis. The Milesian thinker showed his originality by generalising still further and declaring that not only did water surround all things, but that all things were derived from it as their first cause and substance, that water was, so to speak, the material absolute. Never have more pregnant words been spoken; they acted like a ferment on the Greek mind; they were the grain whence grew a tree that has overshadowed the whole earth. At one stroke they substituted a comparatively scientific, because a verifiable principle for the confused fancies of mythologising poets. Not that Thales was an atheist, or an agnostic, or anything of that sort. On the contrary, he is reported to have said that all things were full of gods; and the report sounds credible enough. Most probably the saying was a protest against the popular limitation of divine agencies to certain special occasions and favoured localities. A true thinker seeks above all for consistency and continuity. He will more readily accept a perpetual stream of creative energy than a series of arbitrary and isolated interferences with the course of Nature. For the rest, Thales made no attempt to explain how water came to be transformed into other substances, nor is it likely that the necessity of such an explanation had ever occurred to him. We may suspect that he and others after him were not capable of distinguishing very clearly between such notions as space, time, cause, substance, and limit. It is almost as difficult for us to enter into the thoughts of these primitive philosophers as it would have been for them to comprehend processes of reasoning already familiar to Plato and Aristotle. Possibly the forms under which we arrange our conceptions may become equally obsolete at a more advanced stage of intellectual evolution, and our sharp distinctions may prove to be not9 less artificial than the confused identifications which they have superseded.
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In sit amet sapien eros. Integer in tincidunt velit. Ut sapien est, molestie sit amet metus sit amet, malesuada gravida ex. In hac habitasse platea dictumst. Aliquam iaculis feugiat ipsum, nec ultricies ipsum scelerisque id Praesent lacinia tempor nisi, id rhoncus nisi scelerisque id. I nteger eu sem ipsum
FORE:They heard the strange, hollow sound again, seeming to come from the metal wall, but impossible to locate at once because of the echo.
In sit amet sapien eros. Integer in tincidunt velit. Ut sapien est, molestie sit amet metussit amet, malesuada gravida ex. In hac habita sse platea dictumst. Aliquam iaculis feugiat
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FORE:When the Academicians pass from the form to the matter of dogmatic philosophy, their criticisms acquire greater interest and greater weight. On this ground, their assaults are principally directed against the theology of their Stoic and Epicurean rivals. It is here in particular that151 Carneades reveals himself to us as the Hume of antiquity. Never has the case for agnosticism been more powerfully made out than by him or by the disciples whom he inspired. To the argument for the existence of supernatural beings derived from universal consent, he replies, first, that the opinion of the vulgar is worthless, and secondly, that mens beliefs about the gods are hopelessly at variance with one another, even the same divinity being made the subject of numberless discordant legends.238 He reduces the polytheistic deification of natural objects to an absurdity by forcing it back through a series of insensible gradations into absolute fetichism.239 The personification of mental qualities is similarly treated, until an hypothesis is provided for every passing mood.240 Then, turning to the more philosophical deism of the Stoics, he assails their theory of the divine benevolence with instance after instance of the apparent malevolence and iniquity to be found in Nature; vividly reminding one of the facts adduced by Mr. Herbert Spencer in confutation of the similar views held by modern English theologians.241 As against the whole theory of final causes, Carneades argues after a method which, though logically sound, could not then present itself with the authority which advancing science has more recently shown it to possess. What you Stoics, he says,152 explain as the result of conscious purpose, other philosophers, like Strato for instance, explain with equal plausibility as the result of natural causation. And such is our ignorance of the forces at work in Nature that even where no mechanical cause can be assigned, it would be presumptuous to maintain that none can exist.242 The reign of law does not necessarily prove the presence of intelligence; it is merely the evidence of a uniform movement quite consistent with all that we know about the working of unconscious forces.243 To contend, with Socrates, that the human mind must be derived from a Universal Mind pervading all Nature would logically involve the transfer of every human attribute to its original source.244 And to say that the Supreme Being, because it surpasses man, must possess an intelligence like his, is no more rational than to make the same assumption with regard to a great city because it is superior to an ant.245
In sit amet sapien eros. Integer in tincidunt velit. Ut sapien est, molestie sit amet metussit amet, malesuada gravida ex. In hac habita sse platea dictumst. Aliquam iaculis feugiat
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FORE:Here I also saw in action one of the 30?5 cm. Austrian howitzers mentioned before. The clumsy204 monster was constantly being shunted on a rail forward and backward, and at long intervals sent a gigantic projectile to the threatened quarters. The sound was terrific, and the pressure of the air made people at a great distance tremble on the ground. The Austrian artillerists were still equipped as if they had to fight in a rough, mountainous country; the soles of their shoes were all over covered with hobnails.
In sit amet sapien eros. Integer in tincidunt velit. Ut sapien est, molestie sit amet metussit amet, malesuada gravida ex. In hac habita sse platea dictumst. Aliquam iaculis feugiat
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