ONE:"Well, it seems that the civilians cannot understand that only soldiers may fight soldiers, and for that reason the whole place has been set on fire.""I shall not slip through your fingers in the same way as before," said Leona. "I flatter myself I did you very neatly when you called upon me in Lytton Avenue. But all the same I am going to escape you."
ONE:Yet if Platos theology, from its predominantly rational character, seemed to neglect some feelings which were better182 satisfied by the earlier or the later faiths of mankind, we cannot say that it really excluded them. The unfading strength of the old gods was comprehended in the self-existence of absolute ideas, and moral goodness was only a particular application of reason to the conduct of life. An emotional or imaginative element was also contributed by the theory that every faculty exercised without a reasoned consciousness of its processes and aims was due to some saving grace and inspiration from a superhuman power. It was thus, according to Plato, that poets and artists were able to produce works of which they were not able to render an intelligent account; and it was thus that society continued to hold together with such an exceedingly small amount of wisdom and virtue. Here, however, we have to observe a marked difference between the religious teachers pure and simple, and the Greek philosopher who was a dialectician even more than he was a divine. For Plato held that providential government was merely provisional; that the inspired prophet stood on a distinctly lower level than the critical, self-conscious thinker; that ratiocination and not poetry was the highest function of mind; and that action should be reorganised in accordance with demonstrably certain principles.118Modern turbine wheels have been the subject of the most careful investigation by able engineers, and there is no lack of mathematical data to be referred to and studied after the general principles are understood. The subject, as said, is one of great complicity if followed to detail, and perhaps less useful to a mechanical engineer who does not intend to confine his practice to water-wheels, than other subjects that may be studied with greater advantage. The subject of water-wheels may, indeed, be called an exhausted one that can promise but little return for labour spent upon itwith a view to improvements, at least. The efforts of the ablest hydraulic engineers have not added much to the percentage of useful effect realised by turbine wheels during many years past.
ONE:Now there is only one place of business where a man can turn so large a sum of money into notes, and that place must be a bank. There are a great many banks in London, and the difficulty in finding the right one was enhanced by the fact that nobody besides Prout knew that there was anything wrong about these particular notes. On the face of it, the transaction was a very casual one.
