I dropped to my knee in the reddening pool and passed my arm under his head. "That is logical, at any rate. But to go further. You borrowed a man's coat to put over your shoulders. And the coat you borrowed was mine with the latchkey in the pocket. That I got from a footman. And when I came to look for my skeleton plot, it was gone. Then I knew where I had to search. Leona Lalage was at the bottom of the Corner House mystery. It was her hand that I had to force. Once that was done the rest was easy." Rhetoric conferred even greater power in old Athens than in modern England. Not only did mastery of expression lead to public employment; but also, as every citizen was permitted by law to address his assembled fellow-countrymen and propose measures for their acceptance, it became a direct passport to supreme political authority. Nor was this all. At Athens the employment of professional advocates was not98 allowed, and it was easy to prosecute an enemy on the most frivolous pretexts. If the defendant happened to be wealthy, and if condemnation involved a loss of property, there was a prejudice against him in the minds of the jury, confiscation being regarded as a convenient resource for replenishing the national exchequer. Thus the possession of rhetorical ability became a formidable weapon in the hands of unscrupulous citizens, who were enabled to extort large sums by the mere threat of putting rich men on their trial for some real or pretended offence. This systematic employment of rhetoric for purposes of self-aggrandisement bore much the same relation to the teaching of Protagoras and Gorgias as the open and violent seizure of supreme power on the plea of natural superiority bore to the theories of their rivals, being the way in which practical men applied the principle that truth is determined by persuasion. It was also attended by considerably less danger than a frank appeal to the right of the stronger, so far at least as the aristocratic party were concerned. For they had been taught a lesson not easily forgotten by the downfall of the oligarchies established in 411 and 404; and the second catastrophe especially proved that nothing but a popular government was possible in Athens. Accordingly, the nobles set themselves to study new methods for obtaining their ultimate end, which was always the possession of uncontrolled power over the lives and fortunes of their fellow-citizens. With wealth to purchase instruction from the Sophists, with leisure to practise oratory, and with the ability often accompanying high birth, there was no reason why the successors of Charmides and Critias should not enjoy all the pleasures of tyranny unaccompanied by any of its drawbacks. Here, again, a parallel suggests itself between ancient Greece and modern Europe. On the Continent, where theories of natural law are far more prevalent than with us, it is by brute force that justice is trampled down: the one great object of every ambitious99 intriguer is to possess himself of the military machine, his one great terror, that a stronger man may succeed in wresting it from him; in England the political adventurer looks to rhetoric as his only resource, and at the pinnacle of power has to dread the hailstorm of epigrammatic invective directed against him by abler or younger rivals.74 If the earliest of Plato’s enquiries, while they deal with the same subjects and are conducted on the same method as those cultivated by Socrates, evince a breadth of view surpassing anything recorded of him by Xenophon, they also exhibit traces of an influence disconnected with and inferior in value to his. On more than one occasion121 Plato reasons, or rather quibbles, in a style which he has elsewhere held up to ridicule as characteristic of the Sophists, with such success that the name of sophistry has clung to it ever since.186 Indeed, some of the verbal fallacies employed are so transparent that we can hardly suppose them to be unintentional, and we are forced to conclude that the young despiser of human wisdom was resolved to maintain his thesis with any weapons, good or bad, which came to hand. And it seems much more likely that he learned the eristic art from Protagoras or from his disciples than from Socrates. Plato spent a large part of his life in opposing the Sophists—that is to say, the paid professors of wisdom and virtue; but in spite of, or rather perhaps because of, this very opposition, he was profoundly affected by their teaching and example. It is quite conceivable, although we do not find it stated as a fact, that he resorted to them for instruction when a young man, and before coming under the influence of Socrates, an event which did not take place until he was twenty years old; or he may have been directed to them by Socrates himself. With all its originality, his style bears traces of a rhetorical training in the more elaborate passages, and the Sophists were the only teachers of rhetoric then to be found. His habit of clothing philosophical lessons in the form of a myth seems also to have been borrowed from them. It would, therefore, not be surprising that he should cultivate their argumentative legerdemain side by side with the more strict and severe discipline of Socratic dialectics. VII. Jerusha Abbott Then, from a bridge across the Ganges, for a moment we had a last glimpse of the sacred city—the gold-coloured umbrellas, the throng of bathers on the steps to the river—and then Abibulla gravely remarked, "If only India had three cities like Benares it would be impossible ever to leave it." It must not be supposed that the influx of Asiatic religions into Europe was attended by any loss of faith in the old gods of Greece and Italy, or by any neglect of their worship. The researches of Friedl?nder have proved the absolute erroneousness of such an idea, widely entertained as it has been. Innumerable monuments are in existence testifying to the continued authority of the Olympian divinities, and particularly of Jupiter, over the whole extent of the Roman empire. Ample endowments were still devoted to the maintenance of their service; their temples still smoked with sacrifices; their litanies were still repeated as a duty which it would have been scandalous to neglect; in all hours of public and private danger their help was still implored, and acknowledged by the dedication of votive offerings when the danger was overcome; it was still believed, as in the days of Homer, that they occasionally manifested themselves on earth, signalising their presence by works of superhuman power.339 Nor was there anything anomalous in this peaceable co-existence of the old with the new faiths. So far back as we can trace the records both of Greek and Roman polytheism, they are remarkable for their receptive and assimilative capacity. Apollo and Artemis were imported into Greece from Lycia, Heracles and Aphrodite from Phoenicia, Dionysus and Ares probably from220 Thrace. Roman religion under its oldest form included both a Latin or Sabine and an Etruscan element; at a subsequent period it became Hellenised without losing anything of its grave and decorous character. In Greece, the elastic system of divine relationships was stretched a little further so as to make room for the new comers. The same system, when introduced into Roman mythology, served to connect and enliven what previously had been so many rigid and isolated abstractions. With both, the supreme religious conception continued to be what it had been with their Aryan ancestors, that of a heavenly Father Jove; and the fashionable deities of the empire were received into the pantheon of Homer and Hesiod as recovered or adopted children of the same Olympian sire. The danger to Hellenistic polytheism was not from another form of the same type, but from a faith which should refuse to amalgamate with it on any terms; and in the environment created by Roman imperialism with its unifying and cosmopolitan character, such a faith, if it existed anywhere, could not fail in the long-run to supersede and extinguish its more tolerant rivals. But the immediate effect produced by giving free play to men’s religious instincts was not the concentration of their belief on a single object, or on new to the exclusion of old objects, but an extraordinary abundance and complexity of supernaturalism under all its forms. This general tendency, again, admits of being decomposed into two distinct currents, according as it was determined by the introduction of alien superstitions from without, or by the development of native and popular superstition from within. But, in each case, the retrogressive movement resulted from the same political revolution. At once critical and conservative, the city-aristocracies prevented the perennial germs of religious life from multiplying to any serious extent within the limits of their jurisdiction, no less vigilantly than they prohibited the importation of its completed products from abroad. We have now to study the221 behaviour of these germs when the restraint to which they had formerly been subjected was lightened or withdrawn. The experience of Hobbes differs both in origin and application from either of these. With him, sensible impressions are not a court of appeal against traditional judgments, nor yet are they the ultimate elements into which all ideas may be analysed; they are the channels through which pulsating movements are conveyed into the mind; and these movements, again, represent the action of mechanical forces or the will of a paramount authority. And he holds this doctrine, partly as a logical consequence of his materialism, partly as a safeguard against the theological pretensions which, in his opinion, are a constant threat to social order. The authority of the political sovereign is menaced on the one hand by Papal infallibility, and on the other by rebellious subjects putting forward a claim to supernatural inspiration. To the Pope, Hobbes says: ‘You are violating the law of Nature by professing to derive from God what is really given only by the consent of men, and can only be given by them to their temporal head,—the right to impose a particular religion.‘ To the Puritan, he says: ‘Your inward illumination is a superstitious dream, and you have no right to use it as a pretext for breaking the king’s peace. Religion has really nothing to do with the supernatural; it is only a particular way of inculcating obedience to the natural conditions of social union.’ 162 The words of a woman in a community where women are few carry almost the weight of inspiration. Be she never so hideous or so vile, she is in some measure a Deborah, and the more yet, if she be moved to the lust and love of revenge of the prophetess who sang[Pg 125] in the frenzy of blood drunkenness, "Blessed above women shall Jael the wife of Heber, the Kenite, be. Blessed shall she be above women in the tent." The Deacon found that a ride in a wagon was not such an unqualified favor as he might have thought. The poor, half-fed, overworked mules went so slowly that the Deacon could make better time walking, and he was too merciful to allow them to pull him up hill. "Now we've got 'em, Si," he said gleefully, as he returned to his partner's side, with his hand full of buttons. "They'll have to use both hands to hold their britches on, so they kin neither run nor fight. They'll be as peaceable as lambs." "Great Jehosephat," he said, turning them over for careful inspection. "Ain't this a puddin'? Just the thing to give the Cap. He got his smashed with a bullet comin' through the abatis, and's bin mournin' about 'em ever since. These is better'n his was, and he'll be ticked to death to git 'em." He left the post with a great oath in his heart, and a thin trickle of blood on his chin. HoME九七资源大香蕉 ENTER NUMBET 0015www.thdq.net.cn
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