TWO:I have been necessarily brief in my statement of Teichmüllers theses; and to judge of them apart from the facts and arguments by which they are supported in the two very interesting volumes above named would be in the highest degree unfair. I feel bound, however, to mention the chief reasons which make me hesitate to accept his conclusions. It seems to me, then, that although Plato was moving in the direction of pantheismas I have myself pointed out in more than one passage of this workhe never actually reached it. For (i.) he does not, like Plotinus, attempt to deduce his material from his ideal principle, but only blends without reconciling them in the world of sensible experience. (ii.) In opposing the perishable nature of the individual (or rather the particular) to the eternal nature of the universal, he is going on the facts of experience rather than on any necessary opposition between the two, and on experience of material or sensible objects rather than of immaterial souls; while, even as regards material objects, the heavenly bodies, to which he attributes everlasting duration, constitute such a sweeping exception to his rule as entirely to destroy its applicability. (iii.) Platos multiplied and elaborate arguments for the immortality of the soul would be superfluous were his only object to prove that the soul, like everything else, contains an eternal element. (iv.) The Pythagorean theory that the soul is a harmony, which Plato rejects, wouldxx have been perfectly compatible with the ideal and impersonal immortality which Teichmüller supposes him to have taught; for while the particular harmony perishes, the general laws of harmony remain. (v.) Teichmüller does not dispose satisfactorily of Platos crowning argument that the idea of life is as inseparable from the soul as heat from fire or cold from snow. He says (op. cit., p. 134) that, on this principle, the individual soul may still perish, just as particular portions of fire are extinguished and particular portions of snow are melted. Yes, but portions of fire do not grow cold, nor portions of snow hot, which and which alone would offer an analogy to the extinction of a soul.
THREE:"From your point of view there is nothing wrong," said Prout. "A mere coincidence, sir. If I could only, have a few minutes' private conversation with you, doctor?"Descartes theory of the universe included, however, something more than extension (or matter) and motion. This was Thought. If we ask whence came the notion of Thought, our philosopher will answer that it was obtained by looking into himself. It was, in reality, obtained by looking into Aristotle, or into some text-book reproducing his metaphysics. But the Platonic element in his system enabled Descartes to isolate Thought much more completely than it had been isolated by Aristotle. To understand this, we must turn once more to the Timaeus. Plato made up his universe from space and Ideas. But the Ideas were too vague or too unintelligible for scientific purposes. Even mediaeval Realists were content to replace them by Aristotles much clearer doctrine of Forms. On the other hand, Aristotles First Matter was anything but a satisfactory conception. It was a mere abstraction; the390 unknowable residuum left behind when bodies were stripped, in imagination, of all their sensible and cogitable qualities. In other words, there was no Matter actually existing without Form; whereas Form was never so truly itself, never so absolutely existent, as when completely separated from Matter: it then became simple self-consciousness, as in God, or in the reasonable part of the human soul. The revolution wrought by substituting space for Aristotles First Matter will now become apparent. Corporeal substance could at once be conceived as existing without the co-operation of Form; and at the same stroke, Form, liberated from its material bonds, sprang back into the subjective sphere, to live henceforward only as pure self-conscious thought.
THREE:In the immediate neighbourhood of the railway station a house was being built, of which only the foundations were laid. The place showed nothing beyond a huge cavity. I had noticed already several times that there was an atrocious stench near the station, which at last became unendurable. Pastor Claes, who courageously entered all destroyed houses to look for the dead, had discovered the victims also in this place. In the cave just mentioned he found sixteen corpses of burghers, two priests among them. In order to remove them from the street the Germans had simply thrown them into that cave, without covering the corpses in any way. They had been lying there for days, and were decaying rapidly."Then you will stay again at the episcopal palace, your Eminence?"
THREE:Whenever our escort fancied that they saw something, they stopped and called out to the supposed approaching persons: "Who goes there?" Some125times it was only some shrubs that they saw; at other times patrolling German soldiers. "Parole?" was asked: "Duisburg!" and after that answer they came nearer. At the station I was taken to an officer who sat at a table on the platform and had lit up his nearest surroundings by means of a paraffin-lamp. My little old man wept now so badly that he was quite unmanageable, and the officer made up his mind to get rid of him as quickly as possible.
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