FORE:Speculation now leaves its Asiatic cradle and travels with the Greek colonists to new homes in Italy and Sicily, where new modes of thought were fostered by a new environment. A name, round which mythical accretions have gathered so thickly that the original nucleus of fact almost defies definition, first claims our attention. Aristotle, as is well known, avoids mentioning Pythagoras, and always speaks of the Pythagoreans when he is discussing the opinions held by a certain Italian school. Their doctrine, whoever originated it, was that all things are made out of number. Brandis regards Pythagoreanism as an entirely original effort of speculation,11 standing apart from the main current of Hellenic thought, and to be studied without reference to Ionian philosophy. Zeller, with more plausibility, treats it as an outgrowth of Anaximanders system. In that system the finite and the infinite remained opposed to one another as unreconciled moments of thought. Number, according to the Greek arithmeticians, was a synthesis of the two, and therefore superior to either. To a Pythagorean the finite and the infinite were only one among several antithetical couples, such as odd and even, light and darkness, male and female, and, above all, the one and the many whence every number after unity is formed. The tendency to search for antitheses everywhere, and to manufacture them where they do not exist, became ere long an actual disease of the Greek mind. A Thucydides could no more have dispensed with this cumbrous mechanism than a rope-dancer could get on without his balancing pole; and many a schoolboy has been sorely puzzled by the fantastic contortions which Italiote reflection imposed for a time on Athenian oratory.Arrangement comes next; in this the first matter to be considered is convenience of manipulation. The cutting position should be so arranged as to admit of an easy inspection of the work. An operator having to keep his hand on the adjusting or feed mechanism, which is about twelve inches above the work, it follows that if the cutting level is four feet from the floor, and the feed handle five feet from the floor, the arrangement will be convenient for a standing position. As the work requires continual inspection and hand adjustments, it will for this reason be a proper arrangement to overhang both the supports for the rack and the cutting tools, placing them, as we may say, outside the machine, to secure convenience of access and to allow of inspection. [156] The position of the cutting bar, crank, connections, gearing, pulleys, and shafts, will assume their respective places from obvious conditions, mainly from the position of the operator and the work.
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