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 hands; he remains morally and spiritually asleep; and his position in society is often no higher than that of a polypus over which the tide floats.

Yet the rich man, inspired by a right spirit will spurn idleness as unmanly; and if he bethink himself of the responsibilities which attach to the possession of wealth and property he will feel even a higher call to work than men of humbler lot. This, however, must be admitted to be by no means the practice of life. The golden mean of Agur's perfect prayer is, perhaps, the best lot of all, did we but know it: "Give me neither poverty nor riches; feed me with food convenient for me." The late Joseph Brotherton, M.P., left a fine motto to be recorded upon his monument in the Peel Park at Manchester,—the declaration in his case being strictly true: "My richness consisted not in the greatness of my possessions, but in the smallness of my wants." He rose from the humblest station, that of a factory boy, to an eminent position of usefulness, by the simple exercise of homely honesty, industry, punctuality, and self-denial. Down to the close of his life, when not attending Parliament, he did duty as minister in a small chapel in Manchester to which he was attached; and in all things he made it appear, to those who knew him in private life, that the glory he sought was not "to be seen of men," or to excite their praise, but to earn the consciousness of discharging the every-day duties of life, down to the smallest and humblest of them, in an honest, upright, truthful, and loving spirit.

"Respectability," in its best sense, is good. The


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license: Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/


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 Compliance with his Peruaions. He aid, this was the whole Truth of the Matter, and he would take his Oath of it;’ and concluded with very paionately begging Mr. Allworthy, ‘to have Compaon [sic] on the poor Fellow’s Family, epecially as he himelf had been only guilty, and the other had been very difficultly prevailed on to do what he did. Indeed Sir,’ said he, ‘it could hardly be called a Lie that I told; for the poor Fellow was entirely innocent of the whole Matter. I hould have gone alone after the Birds; nay, I did go at firt, and he only followed me to prevent more Michief. Do, pray, Sir, let me be punihed, take my little Hore away again; but pray, Sir, forgive poor George.’

Mr. Allworthy heitated a few Moments, and then dimied the Boys, adviing them to live more friendly and peaceably together.


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  The Opinions of the Divine and the Philoopher concerning the two Boys; with ome Reaons for their Opinions, and other Matters.

T is probable, that by dicloing this Secret, which had been communicated in the utmot Confidence to him, young Blifil preerved his Companion from a good Lahing: For the Offence of the bloody Noe would have been of itelf ufficient Caue for Thwackum to have proceeded to Correction; but now this was totally aborbed, in the Conideration of the other Matter; and with Regard to this, Mr. Allworthy declared privately, he thought the Boy deerved Reward rather than Punihment; o that Thwackum’s Hand was withheld by a general Pardon.

Thwackum, whoe Meditations were full of Birch, exclaimed againt this weak, and as he aid he would venture to call it, wicked Lenity. To remit the Punihment of uch Crimes was, he aid, to encourage them. He enlarged much on the Correction of Children, and quoted many Texts from


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 Solomon, and others; which being to be found in o many other Books, hall not be found here. He then applied himelf to the Vice of Lying, on which Head he was altogether as learned as he had been on the other.

Square aid, he had been endeavouring to reconcile the Behaviour of Tom with his idea of perfect Virtue; but could not. He owned there was omething which at firt Sight appeared like Fortitude in the Action; but as Fortitude was a Virtue, and Falhood a Vice, they could by no Means agree or unite together. He added, that as this was in ome meaure to confound Virtue and Vice, it might be worth Mr. Thwackum’s Conideration, whether a larger Catigation might not be laid on, upon that Account.

As both thee learned Men concurred in cenuring Jones, o were they no les unanimous in applauding Mater Blifil. To bring Truth to light, was by the Paron aerted to be the Duty of every religious Man; and by the Philoopher this was declared to be highly conformable with the Rule of Right, and the eternal and unalterable Fitnes of Things.


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 All this, however, weighed very little with Mr. Allworthy. He could not be prevailed on to ign the Warrant for the Execution of Jones. There was omething within his own Breat with which the invincible Fidelity which that Youth had preerved, correponded much better than it had done with the Religion of Thwackum, or with the Virtue of Square. He therefore trictly ordered the former of thee Gentlemen to abtain from laying violent Hands on Tom for what had pat. The Pedagogue was obliged to obey thoe Orders; but not without great Reluctance, and frequent Mutterings, that the Boy would be certainly poiled.

Towards the Game-keeper the good Man behaved with more Severity. He preently ummoned that poor Fellow before him, and after many bitter Remontrances, paid him his Wages, and dimit him from his Service; for Mr. Allworthy rightly oberved that there was a great Difference between being guilty of a Falehood to excue yourelf, and to excue another. He likewie urged, as the principal Motive to his inflexible Severity againt this Man, that he had baely uffered Tom Jones to undergo o heavy a


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 Punihment for his Sake, whereas he ought to have prevented it by making the Dicovery himelf.

When this Story became public, many People differed from Square and Thwackum, in judging the Conduct of the two Lads on the Occaion. Mater Blifil was generally called a neaking Racal, a poor-pirited Wretch; with other Epithets of the like Kind; whilt Tom was honoured with the Appellations of a brave Lad, a jolly Dog, and an honet Fellow. Indeed his Behaviour to Black George much ingratiated him with all the Servants; for though that Fellow was before univerally diliked, yet he was no ooner turned away than he was as univerally pitied; and the Friendhip and Gallantry of Tom Jones was celebrated by them all with the highet Applaue; and they condemned Mater Blifil, as openly as they durt, without incurring the Danger of offending his Mother. For all this, however, poor Tom marted in the Fleh; for though Thwackum had been inhibited to exercie his Arm on the foregoing Account; yet, as the Proverb ays, It is eay to find a Stick, &c. So was it eay to find a Rod; and, indeed, the not being able to find one was the only thing which could have kept


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 Thwackum any long Time from chatiing poor Jones.

Had the bare Delight in the Sport been the only Inducement to the Pedagogue, it is probable, Mater Blifil would likewie have had his Share; but thought Mr. Allworthy had given him frequent Orders to make no Difference between the Lads, yet was Thwackum altogether as kind and gentle to this Youth, as he was harh, nay even barbarous, to the other. To ay the Truth, Blifil had greatly gained his Mater’s Affections; partly by the profound Repect he always hewed his Peron, but much more by the decent Reverence with which he received his Doctrine; for he had got by Heart, and frequently repeated his Phraes, and maintained all his Mater’s religious Principles with a Zeal which was urpriing in one o young, and which greatly endeared him to the worthy Preceptor.

Tom Jones, on the other hand, was not only deficient in outward Tokens of Repect, often forgetting to pull off his Hat, or to bow at his Mater’s Approach; but was altogether as unmindful both of his Mater’s Precepts and Example. He was indeed a


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 traites, which correspond to our customs, divide the kingdom into three great parts; first, the provinces subject to the tariff of 1664, which are called the provinces of the five great farms, and under which are comprehended Picardy, Normandy, and the greater part of the interior provinces of the kingdom; secondly, the provinces subject to the tariff of 1667, which are called the provinces reckoned foreign, and under which are comprehended the greater part of the frontier provinces; and, thirdly, those provinces which are said to be treated as foreign, or which, because they are allowed a free commerce with foreign countries, are in their commerce with the other provinces of France subjected to the same duties as other foreign countries. These are Alsace, the three bishoprics of Metz, Toul and Verdun, and the three cities of Dunkirk, Bayonne and Marseilles. Both in the provinces of the five great farms (called so on account of an ancient division of the duties of customs into five great branches, each of which was originally the subject of a particular farm, though they are now all united into one), and in those which are said to be reckoned foreign, there are many local duties which do not extend beyond a particular town or district. There are some such even in the provinces which are said to be treated as foreign, particularly in the city of Marseilles. It is unnecessary to observe how much, both the restraints upon the interior commerce of the country, and the number of the revenue officers must be multiplied, in order to guard the frontiers of those different provinces and districts, which are subject to such different systems of taxation.

Over and above the general restraints arising from this complicated system of revenue laws, the commerce of wine,


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Variants Notes


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Unlike good neighbourly relations, on February 24-26, 2022, with the full assistance of the Republic of Belarus, an open military aggression of the Russian Federation against Ukraine was launched by using combat aircraft, ballistic missiles, artillery, tanks, armoured vehicles, ground troops and other forces and means from the territory of the Republic of Belarus.

Russian units on the Ukrainian-Belarussian sector of the border, supported by the Republic of Belarus, carry out missile and bomb strikes, destroying civilian objects in Ukraine, killing civilians, encroaching on the state sovereignty and territorial integrity of Ukraine in order to establish occupation control.

The Republic of Belarus, together with the Russian Federation, is waging war against Ukraine, disregarding the provisions of international law, the elementary norms of human morality and the values of life.

GOD DAMN YOU, BUSTARDSBASTARDS [sic]!

SCORNFULLY!

Head of the State Border Guard Service of Ukraine Major General Serhii DEINEKO


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216 The story of the medieval section of this pathetic martyrdom is written in the Selichoth and in the more prosaic records known as “Memorial Books” (in German, Memorbücher), which are lists of martyrs and brief eulogies of their careers.

For the next formal history we must pass to Abraham Zacuto. In his old age he employed some years of comparative quiet, after a stormy and unhappy life, in writing a “Book of Genealogies” (Yuchasin). He had been exiled from Spain in 1492, and twelve years later composed his historical work in Tunis. Like Abraham Ibn Daud’s book, it opens with the Creation, and ends with the author’s own day. Though Zacuto’s work is more celebrated than historical, it nevertheless had an important share in reawaking the dormant interest of Jews in historical research. Thus we find Elijah Kapsali of Candia writing, in 1523, a “History of the Ottoman Empire,” and Joseph Cohen, of Avignon, a “History of France


text: Letter from Serhii Vasyliovych Deineko to Anatoly Petrovich Lappo on February 26, 2022


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Author:Serhii Vasyliovych Deineko

Works

 * Letter from Serhii Vasyliovych Deineko to Anatoly Petrovich Lappo on February 26, 2022

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Rh and Turkey,” in 1554, in which he included an account of the rebellion of Fiesco in Genoa, where the author was then residing.

The sixteenth century witnessed the production of several popular Jewish histories. At that epoch the horizon of the world was extending under new geographical and intellectual discoveries. Israel, on the other hand, seemed to be sinking deeper and deeper into the slough of despond. Some of the men who had themselves been the victims of persecution saw that the only hope lay in rousing the historical consciousness of their brethren. History became the consolation of the exiles from Spain who found themselves pent up within the walls of the Ghettos, which were first built in the sixteenth century. Samuel Usque was a fugitive from the Inquisition, and his dialogues, “Consolations for the Tribulations of Israel” (written in Portuguese, in 1553), are a long drawn-out sigh of pain passing into a sigh of relief. Usque opens


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354 wife-elect that she will need Martha's executive hands, and Mary's appreciating soul, to keep those altars swept and garnished, and have murmured in her partner's ear that he must reign within those walls with Solomon's wisdom and Jacob's patience. Thus the prolonged betrothal is often the tuneful prelude to a harmonious union, with no harsh discords to disturb its life-long melody.

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ERILS of prosperity! "Oh, all very fine! but I should like to experience those perils a little," cries an incredulous young friend, quoting from that precocious juvenile who made the same answer to his mother, when she told him that he must abstain from certain amusements which she accounted full of sin and peril.

We all want to experience alluring perils for ourselves, especially those of prosperity. Seemingly, they must be very pleasant to encounter. Who denies that they are? But even the sense of long-protracted pleasure palls and wearies. Uninterrupted prosperity tries the spirit more severely than continuous adversity. You shake your curly head, youthful doubter. You cannot believe that those fair-seeming apples which you hunger to taste, may, like those gathered on the Dead Sea shore, leave only ashes upon your eager lips. Yet we give you high authority for our assertion. Listen to what Jeremy Taylor said: "No man is more miserable than he that hath no adversity;

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 him in communion with angelic existences), he must cast out the spirit of fault-seeking, and substitute in its place that loving gaze which beholds the least precious gem of worth, though buried deep beneath beneathbeneath [sic] the mire of impurity—that holy vision which discovers the feeblest shoot of virtue, though overshadowed by the flaunting weeds of folly.

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Y library was dukedom large enough," said the majestic Prospero; and to a true lover of books a choice library is a kingdom of countless opulence and measureless extent. At the feet of its sovereign a Golconda opens, and from its teeming mines he may gather gems of knowledge to circle his own brow with a diadem more lustrous than the crowns of princes.

No wizard's wand in olden days ever wrought such marvels as the mighty conjuring of quaint John Guttenberg's unsightly types! As we gaze upon the transcript of master minds, spread before us by their dark impress, what spectral forms start from the magic pages! The solitary room is peopled with shapes that came not in at the doors. The great man, whose bones lie mouldering in yonder churchyard, stands beside us, a dear, familiar friend. The buried beauty floods the chamber with the golden radiance of her smile. Electric flashes of wit play around us from mouths that have long been fleshless. The silence is made musical with tones of pathos, of mirth, of counsel,

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 the stirring of some chance chord calls up an involuntary remembrance, it will quickly be silenced and cast out of the thoughts. Let us not flatter ourselves into the convenient belief that we generously, and with Christian leniency, forgive the injuries we receive (and who is so insignificant that he receives none?) if we keep a strict account of their sum and magnitude. Not one single one of them is fully pardoned until it has been plunged beneath the waters of Lethe!

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T is easier to cavil than to applaud—easier to carp than to appreciate. The voice of praise is low and feeble, for it issues from the generous and discriminating few; its tone is readily drowned by the loud cries of condemnation roared from the lips of the captious million. No talent, no taste, no information are requisite to qualify the self-constituted censor for his office.

says the poet. These surgeons of literature pass through no college, and earn no diplomas, to establish their right to cut and slash, dismember and decapitate the fair offsprings of mightier minds. Walter Scott aptly designates them as "tinkers who, unable to make pots and pans themselves, set up for menders of them."

In art, as in literature, their eyes search out defects alone, and are as blind to beauties as bats

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 HattonMS.] OSBGOBT's FASTOKAL. Sll

nan yfel ne doo. Da fortrawodnesse & %a anwilnesse an Corincthetiffi Paulus ongeat suHSe wi^rweardne wi% hine, & betweoh him selfam flui^Se ai^undene & upahaefene; sua ^eette sume cuaedon %8et hie wsroD ApoUan, si^me ciUBdon ^eet hi wseron Saules, sume Petres, S aom ciue% tet he waere Cristes. Ac Pa[a]la8 ^ sona %a unclaemui flcylde beforan him allum saede, ^ an hiera e[a]lra gewitnesse gedon iraea, A %agiet nngebet ; he cn»% : We gehierdon betueozn eow unryhthffimed, ge sua unryht sua we fur%um betwuxn hae^nnm monnum ne hierdon, ^t [is Vnt] ge sume hsefdon eowre steopmodur,

10-& [ge] ^Sses n»fdon nane sorge, & noldon from eow adon %a %e tet djdon, ac wSBron sua lipahaefene sua ge ter weron. Sueloe he open- lioe cusede : Hwaei wille ge for eowerre fortruwodnesse & for eowerre anwibiesse cue^an, hwsBs o^S^e hwaes ge sien ? For^a&m^ [on eo}werre towesnesse ge habba% gecy^ed %aet ge ures nanes ne siendon. Ac ^

15 Ijtelmodan &, %a un%riestan we magon %y ie% on %aem wege gebringan godra weorca^ gif we healfuuga & %eah be sumum dele heora godan weorc 6e[c]gea¥y for^m, %onn« we hira yfel tse]a%, iSmt we eac hira god herigen, forVaem %8st we hira modes me[a]ruwnesse gesti^igen mid %8em %est hie gehiren [%8Bt we hi herigenj & %8ette eft sien hira

20 scyl^a ge^reade mid ¥am %aet we hie taelen. Oft we magon beon sua njttran set him, gif we hie myndgia% hira godna weorca, A. ^ secgeaY, & gif we hwset ongieta% on him ungesceadwislioes gedoon, ne sculon we no hi ^reagean suelce hie hit gedoon hssbben, ^Seah hit gedon sie, ac we sculon him forbeodan %£et hie huru sua ne don,

25 suelce hit ^UTie giet gedon ne sie, for^aem %oet sio hering %e we ser

and obstinacy, whose ye are ? For by your laxity ye have shown that ye belong not to any of us/' But we can the more easily bring the fainthearted and diffident on the path of good works by partially mentioning their good works, so that when we blame their faults we may also praise their virtues, that we may strengthen the weakness of their minds by allowing them to hear how we praise them, and again, that their sins may be chastised by our blame. Often we can be mcHre useful to them by remindiog them of their good works, and mentioning them, and if we perceive that they have committed an imprudence, we must not blame them as if they had done it, although it be done, but we must forbid them to do so, as if it were not yet done, that our

14— a


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 respectable man is one worthy of regard, literally worth turning to look at. But the respectability that consists in merely keeping up appearances is not worth looking at in any sense. Far better and more respectable is the good poor man than the bad rich one—better the humble silent man than the agreeable well appointed rogue who keeps his gig. A well balanced and well stored mind, a life full of useful purpose, whatever the position occupied in it may be, is of far greater importance than average worldly respectability. The highest object of life we take to be to form a manly character, and to work out the best development possible, of body and spirit—of mind, conscience, heart, and soul. This is the end: all else ought to be regarded but as the means. Accordingly, that is not the most successful life in which a man gets the most pleasure, the most money, the most power or place, honour or fame; but that in which a man gets the most manhood, and performs the greatest amount of useful work and of human duty. Money is power after its sort, it is true; but intelligence, public spirit, and moral virtue, are powers too, and far nobler ones. "Let others plead for pensions," wrote Lord Collingwood to a friend; "I can be rich without money, by endeavouring to be superior to everything poor. I would have my services to my country unstained by any interested motive; and old Scott and I can go on in our cabbage-


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 the beauty of goodness, the nobleness of self-sacrifice. They show that obedience to the harshest decrees of duty may become a pleasure. They demonstrate the value of time by such cheerful use of every moment, that conscience-stricken Indolence, sitting in their presence, becomes oppressed by her own idleness, and deems it heavier than the weight of labor. They inspire the weak of purpose with reverence for the strength of zeal, by their earnestness. They illustrate the glory of self-conquest, by their victory over those evil passions which are the "foes of a man's own household;" and prove how sweet is the peace which comes after such holy warfare, by their serenity. They pass through the world encompassed by an atmosphere of purity and power so potent and so subtle, that it penetrates into closed hearts, which no less delicate agency could reach, and melts their iciness, and softens their hardness, and breathes the very breath of life into souls that seemed dead. Therefore have we more faith in the puissant ministry of these voiceless preachers than in the most sensation-seeking, revival-rousing exhortation that was ever thundered from the lips of eloquence; for it is not possible to deny that

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OU have wronged me—I forgive you—but I cannot forget," was Mrs. Flintwell's reply to Miss Abbie Lightly, who came to her a suppliant for pardon.

Abbie was thoughtless, impulsive, unsettled in character. All that was evil within her floated up to the surface, bubbling and babbling, and readily stimulated into action. But there was a golden vein of virtue lying beneath the froth and foam of her effervescent nature. When the passing excitement, which prompted light speech and rash act, subsided; when she sat in the calm seclusion of her own chamber, the good angel, Reflection, softly entered in, and, with sad visage, raised a magic mirror before her eyes, and showed her inconsequent deeds flitting by in long procession, and sorrowfully rehearsed her short-comings and their sequence. And Abbie gazed upon that reproachful presentment, and listened to that gentle, regretful tone, and was moved to contrition! Better still, she rose up courageously and went to the one against whom she had sinned. Though her spirit

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 ly does not imagine that others are thinking of him. If his hidden merits are accidentally discovered, the blush that suffuses his cheek is not one of painful bashfulness, but of startled humility and pleasant surprise. His manner evinces that he neither demands nor expects consideration, and consequently it has a conciliating tendency, inclining the world, so niggardly to those who claim their rights, to give modest worth its fullest due.

Let the bashful man contrast his experiences with those of the truly modest man, and he cannot close his eyes to the great truth that the secret cause of his social discomfort is a torturing self-consciousness, and that the cure lies in ceasing to speculate upon what others are thinking of him—in ceasing to think of himself at all.

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E who can take advice is sometimes superior to him who can give it," said a distinguished author. Change the "sometimes" to often and we tread one step nearer to the truth. It costs so little labor to give precepts and monitions; it is so natural to enact the task-master and apportion every man's duty; so pleasant to play the sign-post, and point out the road that others are bound to follow, while we travel upon the primrose-path ourselves!

There was never yet an honest counsellor, however wise or eloquent, who could not have exclaimed with Portia: "I can easier teach twenty what is good to be done, than be one of the twenty to follow mine own teaching!" Seneca found it agreeable to set forth the advantages of poverty, while he was writing upon a table of gold; Steele delighted to laud temperance with the fumes of the grape careering through his brain. Sterne vented his tender-heartedness by a touching lamentation over a donkey, and the same hand with which he inscribed his pathetic plaint, fell heavily upon the

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text: A Chinese Biographical Dictionary/Fang Chung-t'ung


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two previous lectures of this course have been mainly critical. In the present lecture I propose to enter upon a survey of the kinds of entities which are posited for knowledge in sense-awareness. My purpose is to investigate the sorts of relations which these entities of various kinds can bear to each other. A classification of natural entities is the beginning of natural philosophy. To-day we commence with the consideration of Time.

In the first place there is posited for us a general fact: namely, something is going on; there is an occurrence for definition.

This general fact at once yields for our apprehension two factors, which I will name, the ‘discerned’ and the ‘discernible.’ The discerned is comprised of those elements of the general fact which are discriminated with their own individual peculiarities. It is the field directly perceived. But the entities of this field have relations to other entities which are not particularly discriminated in this individual way. These other entities are known merely as the relata in relation to the entities of the discerned field. Such an entity is merely a ‘something’ which has such-and-such definite relations to some definite entity or entities in the discerned field. As being thus related, they are — owing to the particular character of these relations — known as elements of the general fact which is going on. But we are not aware of them except as entities fulfilling the functions of relata in these relations.

Thus the complete general fact, posited as occurring, comprises both sets of entities, namely the entities

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lecture must commence with the consideration of limited events. We shall then be in a position to enter upon an investigation of the factors in nature which are represented by our conception of space.

The duration which is the immediate disclosure of our sense-awareness is discriminated into parts. There is the part which is the life of all nature within a room, and there is the part which is the life of all nature within a table in the room. These parts are limited events. They have the endurance of the present duration, and they are parts of it. But whereas a duration is an unlimited whole and in a certain limited sense is all that there is, a limited event possesses a completely defined limitation of extent which is expressed for us in spatio-temporal terms.

We are accustomed to associate an event with a certain melodramatic quality. If a man is run over, that is an event comprised within certain spatio-temporal limits. We are not accustomed to consider the endurance of the Great Pyramid throughout any definite day as an event. But the natural fact which is the Great Pyramid throughout a day, meaning thereby all nature within it, is an event of the same character as the man’s accident, meaning thereby all nature with spatio-temporal limitations so as to include the man and the motor during the period when they were in contact.

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topic for this lecture is the continuation of the task of explaining the construction of spaces as abstracts from the facts of nature. It was noted at the close of the previous lecture that the question of congruence had not been considered, nor had the construction of a timeless space which should correlate the successive momentary spaces of a given time-system. Furthermore it was also noted that there were many spatial abstractive elements which we had not yet defined. We will first consider the definition of some of these abstractive elements, namely the definitions of solids, of areas, and of routes. By a ‘route’ I mean a linear segment, whether straight or curved. The exposition of these definitions and the preliminary explanations necessary will, I hope, serve as a general explanation of the function of event-particles in the analysis of nature.

We note that event-particles have ‘position’ in respect to each other. In the last lecture I explained that ‘position’ was quality gained by a spatial element in virtue of the intersecting moments which covered it. Thus each event-particle has position in this sense. The simplest mode of expressing the position in nature of an event-particle is by first fixing on any definite time-system. Call it α. There will be one moment of the temporal series of α which covers the given event-particle. Thus the position of the event-particle in the temporal series α is defined by this moment, which we

title: Page:The Concept of Nature.djvu/112


text:
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aim of this lecture is to establish a theory of congruence. You must understand at once that congruence is a controversial question. It is the theory of measurement in space and in time. The question seems simple. In fact it is simple enough for a standard procedure to have been settled by act of parliament; and devotion to metaphysical subtleties is almost the only crime which has never been imputed to any English parliament. But the procedure is one thing and its meaning is another.

First let us fix attention on the purely mathematical question. When the segment between two points A and B is congruent to that between the two points C and D, the quantitative measurements of the two segments are equal. The equality of the numerical measures and the congruence of the two segments are not always clearly discriminated, and are lumped together under the term equality. But the procedure of measurement presupposes congruence. For example, a yard measure is applied successively to measure two distances between two pairs of points on the floor of a room. It is of the essence of the procedure of measurement that the yard measure remains unaltered as it is transferred from one position to another. Some objects can palpably alter as they move — for example, an elastic thread; but a yard measure does not alter if made of the proper material. What is this but a judgment of congruence applied to the train of successive positions of the yard

title: Page:The Concept of Nature.djvu/133


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ensuing lecture is concerned with the theory of objects. Objects are elements in nature which do not pass. The awareness of an object as some factor not sharing in the passage of nature is what I call ‘recognition.’ It is impossible to recognise an event, because an event is essentially distinct from every other event. Recognition is an awareness of sameness. But to call recognition an awareness of sameness implies an intellectual act of comparison accompanied with judgment. I use recognition for the non-intellectual relation of sense-awareness which connects the mind with a factor of nature without passage. On the intellectual side of the mind’s experience there are comparisons of things recognised and consequent judgments of sameness or diversity. Probably ‘sense-recognition’ would be a better term for what I mean by ‘recognition.’ I have chosen the simpler term because I think that I shall be able to avoid the use of ‘recognition’ in any other meaning than that of ‘sense-recognition.’ I am quite willing to believe that recognition, in my sense of the term, is merely an ideal limit, and that there is in fact no recognition without intellectual accompaniments of comparison and judgment. But recognition is that relation of the mind to nature which provides the material for the intellectual activity.

An object is an ingredient in the character of some event. In fact the character of an event is nothing but the objects which are ingredient in it and the ways in

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is a general agreement that Einstein’s investigations have one fundamental merit irrespective of any criticisms which we may feel inclined to pass on them. They have made us think. But when we have admitted so far, we are most of us faced with a distressing perplexity. What is it that we ought to think about? The purport of my lecture this afternoon will be to meet this difficulty and, so far as I am able, to set in a clear light the changes in the background of our scientific thought which are necessitated by any acceptance, however qualified, of Einstein’s main positions. I remember that I am lecturing to the members of a chemical society who are not for the most part versed in advanced mathematics. The first point that I would urge upon you is that what immediately concerns you is not so much the detailed deductions of the new theory as this general change in the background of scientific conceptions which will follow from its acceptance. Of course, the detailed deductions are important, because unless our colleagues the astronomers and the physicists find these predictions to be verified we can neglect the theory altogether. But we may now take it as granted that in many striking particulars these deductions have been found to be in agreement with observation. Accordingly the theory has to be taken seriously and we are anxious to know what will be the consequences of its final acceptance. Furthermore during the last few weeks

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second chapter of this book lays down the first principle to be guarded in framing our physical concept. We must avoid vicious bifurcation Nature is nothing else than the deliverance of sense-awareness. We have no principles whatever to tell us what could stimulate mind towards sense-awareness. Our sole task is to exhibit in one system the characters and inter-relations of all that is observed. Our attitude towards nature is purely ‘behaviouristic,’ so far as concerns the formulation of physical concepts.

Our knowledge of nature is an experience of activity (or passage). The things previously observed are active entities, the ‘events.’ They are chunks in the life of nature. These events have to each other relations which in our knowledge differentiate themselves into space-relations and time-relations. But this differentiation between space and time, though inherent in nature, is comparatively superficial; and space and time are each partial expressions of one fundamental relation between events which is neither spatial nor temporal. This relation I call ‘extension.’ The relation of ‘extending over’ is the relation of ‘including,’ either in a spatial or in a temporal sense, or in both. But the mere ‘inclusion’ is more fundamental than either alternative and does not require any spatio-temporal differentiation. In respect to extension two events are mutually related so that either (i) one includes the other, or (ii) one overlaps the other without complete inclusion, or (iii) they

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 increase in the types of objects directly sensed. Delicacy of sense-apprehension means perceptions of objects as distinct entities which are mere subtle ideas to cruder sensibilities. The phrasing of music is a mere abstract subtlety to the unmusical; it is a direct sense-apprehension to the initiated. For example, if we could imagine some lowly type of organic being thinking and aware of our thoughts, it would wonder at the abstract subtleties in which we indulge as we think of stones and bricks and drops of water and plants. It only knows of vague undifferentiated feelings in nature. It would consider us as given over to the play of excessively abstract intellects. But then if it could think, it would anticipate; and if it anticipated, it would soon perceive for itself.

In these lectures we have been scrutinising the foundations of natural philosophy. We are stopping at the very point where a boundless ocean of enquiries opens out for our questioning.

I agree that the view of Nature which I have maintained in these lectures is not a simple one. Nature appears as a complex system whose factors are dimly discerned by us. But, as I ask you, Is not this the very truth? Should we not distrust the jaunty assurance with which every age prides itself that it at last has hit upon the ultimate concepts in which all that happens can be formulated? The aim of science is to seek the simplest explanations of complex facts. We are apt to fall into the error of thinking that the facts are simple because simplicity is the goal of our quest. The guiding motto in the life of every natural philosopher should be, Seek simplicity and distrust it.

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 What we perceive as present is the vivid fringe of memory tinged with anticipation. This vividness lights up the discriminated field within a duration. But no assurance can thereby be given that the happenings of nature cannot be assorted into other durations of alternative families. We cannot even know that the series of immediate durations posited by the sense-awareness of one individual mind all necessarily belong to the same family of durations. There is not the slightest reason to believe that this is so. Indeed if my theory of nature be correct, it will not be the case.

The materialistic theory has all the completeness of the thought of the middle ages, which had a complete answer to everything, be it in heaven or in hell or in nature. There is a trimness about it, with its instantaneous present, its vanished past, its non-existent future, and its inert matter. This trimness is very medieval and ill accords with brute fact.

The theory which I am urging admits a greater ultimate mystery and a deeper ignorance. The past and the future meet and mingle in the ill-defined present. The passage of nature which is only another name for the creative force of existence has no narrow ledge of definite instantaneous present within which to operate. Its operative presence which is now urging nature forward must be sought for throughout the whole, in the remotest past as well as in the narrowest breadth of any present duration. Perhaps also in the unrealised future. Perhaps also in the future which might be as well as the actual future which will be. It is impossible to meditate on time and the mystery of the creative passage of nature without an overwhelming emotion at the limitations of human intelligence.

title: Page:The Concept of Nature.djvu/86


text: A Chinese Biographical Dictionary/Fang Fêng-shih


text: A Chinese Biographical Dictionary/Fang Hsiao-ju


text: A Chinese Biographical Dictionary/Fang Hsien


text: The Concept of Nature/Chapter 2

title: The Concept of Nature/Chapter 2


text:
Page:The Concept of Nature.djvu/63

 perceived in their own individuality and other entities merely apprehended as relata without further definition. This complete general fact is the discernible and it comprises the discerned. The discernible is all nature as disclosed in that sense-awareness, and extends beyond and comprises all of nature as actually discriminated or discerned in that sense-awareness. The discerning or discrimination of nature is a peculiar awareness of special factors in nature in respect to their peculiar characters. But the factors in nature of which we have this peculiar sense-awareness are known as not comprising all the factors which together form the whole complex of related entities within the general fact there for discernment. This peculiarity of knowledge is what I call its unexhaustive character. This character may be metaphorically described by the statement that nature as perceived always has a ragged edge. For example, there is a world beyond the room to which our sight is confined known to us as completing the space-relations of the entities discerned within the room. The junction of the interior world of the room with the exterior world beyond is never sharp. Sounds and subtler factors disclosed in sense-awareness float in from the outside. Every type of sense has its own set of discriminated entities which are known to be relata in relation with entities not discriminated by that sense. For example we see something which we do not touch and we touch something which we do not see, and we have a general sense of the space-relations between the entity disclosed in sight and the entity disclosed in touch. Thus in the first place each of these two entities is known as a relatum in a general system of space-relations and in the second place the particular mutual relation of

title: Page:The Concept of Nature.djvu/63


text:
Page:The Concept of Nature.djvu/64

 these two entities as related to each other in this general system is determined. But the general system of space-relations relating the entity discriminated by sight with that discriminated by sight is not dependent on the peculiar character of the other entity as reported by the alternative sense. For example, the space-relations of the thing seen would have necessitated an entity as a relatum in the place of the thing touched even although certain elements of its character had not been disclosed by touch. Thus apart from the touch an entity with a certain specific relation to the thing seen would have been disclosed by sense-awareness but not otherwise discriminated in respect to its individual character. An entity merely known as spatially related to some discerned entity is what we mean by the bare idea of ‘place.’ The concept of place marks the disclosure in sense-awareness of entities in nature known merely by their spatial relations to discerned entities. It is the disclosure of the discernible by means of its relations to the discerned.

This disclosure of an entity as a relatum without further specific discrimination of quality is the basis of our concept of significance. In the above example the thing seen was significant, in that it disclosed its spatial relations to other entities not necessarily otherwise entering into consciousness. Thus significance is relatedness, but it is relatedness with the emphasis on one end only of the relation.

For the sake of simplicity I have confined the argument to spatial relations; but the same considerations apply to temporal relations. The concept of ‘period of time’ marks the disclosure in sense-awareness of entities in nature known merely by their temporal relations to

title: Page:The Concept of Nature.djvu/64


text: A Chinese Biographical Dictionary/Fang Hsüan-ling


text: A Chinese Biographical Dictionary/Fang Kuan-ch'êng


text:
Page:The Concept of Nature.djvu/65

 discerned entities. Still further, this separation of the ideas of space and time has merely been adopted for the sake of gaining simplicity of exposition by conformity to current language. What we discern is the specific character of a place through a period of time. This is what I mean by an ‘event.’ We discern some specific character of an event. But in discerning an event we are also aware of its significance as a relatum in the structure of events. This structure of events is the complex of events as related by the two relations of extension and cogredience. The most simple expression of the properties of this structure are to be found in our spatial and temporal relations. A discerned event is known as related in this structure to other events whose specific characters are otherwise not disclosed in that immediate awareness except so far as that they are relata within the structure.

The disclosure in sense-awareness of the structure of events classifies events into those which are discerned in respect to some further individual character and those which are not otherwise disclosed except as elements of the structure. These signified events must include events in the remote past as well as events in the future. We are aware of these as the far off periods of unbounded time. But there is another classification of events which is also inherent in sense-awareness. These are the events which share the immediacy of the immediately present discerned events. These are the events whose characters together with those of the discerned events comprise all nature present for discernment. They form the complete general fact which is all nature now present as disclosed in that sense-awareness. It is in this second classification of events that the differentiation of space from time takes its origin. The germ of

title: Page:The Concept of Nature.djvu/65


text: A Chinese Biographical Dictionary/Fang Kuo-chên


text:
Page:The Concept of Nature.djvu/66

 space is to be found in the mutual relations of events within the immediate general fact which is all nature now discernible, namely within the one event which is the totality of present nature. The relations of other events to this totality of nature form the texture of time.

The unity of this general present fact is expressed by the concept of simultaneity. The general fact is the whole simultaneous occurrence of nature which is now for sense-awareness. This general fact is what I have called the discernible. But in future I will call it a ‘duration,’ meaning thereby a certain whole of nature which is limited only by the property of being a simultaneity. Further in obedience to the principle of comprising within nature the whole terminus of sense-awareness, simultaneity must not be conceived as an irrelevant mental concept imposed upon nature. Our sense-awareness posits for immediate discernment a certain whole, here called a ‘duration’; thus a duration is a definite natural entity. A duration is discriminated as a complex of partial events, and the natural entities which are components of this complex are thereby said to be ‘simultaneous with this duration.’ Also in a derivative sense they are simultaneous with each other in respect to this duration. Thus simultaneity is a definite natural relation. The word ‘duration’ is perhaps unfortunate in so far as it suggests a mere abstract stretch of time. This is not what I mean. A duration is a concrete slab of nature limited by simultaneity which is an essential factor disclosed in sense-awareness.

Nature is a process. As in the case of everything directly exhibited in sense-awareness, there can be no explanation of this characteristic of nature. All that can be done is to use language which may speculatively

title: Page:The Concept of Nature.djvu/66


text: A Chinese Biographical Dictionary/Fang Pao


text:
Page:The Concept of Nature.djvu/67

 demonstrate it, and also to express the relation of this factor in nature to other factors.

It is an exhibition of the process of nature that each duration happens and passes. The process of nature can also be termed the passage of nature. I definitely refrain at this stage from using the word ‘time,’ since the measurable time of science and of civilised life generally merely exhibits some aspects of the more fundamental fact of the passage of nature. I believe that in this doctrine I am in full accord with Bergson, though he uses ‘time’ for the fundamental fact which I call the ‘passage of nature.’ Also the passage of nature is exhibited equally in spatial transition as well as in temporal transition. It is in virtue of its passage that nature is always moving on. It is involved in the meaning of this property of ‘moving on’ that not only is any act of sense-awareness just that act and no other, but the terminus of each act is also unique and is the terminus of no other act. Sense-awareness seizes its only chance and presents for knowledge something which is for it alone.

There are two senses in which the terminus of sense-awareness is unique. It is unique for the sense-awareness of an individual mind and it is unique for the sense-awareness of all minds which are operating under natural conditions. There is an important distinction between the two cases. (i) For one mind not only is the discerned component of the general fact exhibited in any act of sense-awareness distinct from the discerned component of the general fact exhibited in any other act of sense-awareness of that mind, but the two corresponding durations which are respectively related by simultaneity to the two discerned components are necessarily distinct. This is an exhibition of the temporal

title: Page:The Concept of Nature.djvu/67


text: A Chinese Biographical Dictionary/Fang Ts'ung-chê


text: A Chinese Biographical Dictionary/Fang Yao


text:
Page:Nature and Life (1934).pdf/64

 more prominent. There is great variation in this respect between the different modes. In any doctrine as to the information derived from sense-perception this dual reference — external reference and bodily reference — should be kept in mind. The current philosophic doctrines, mostly derived from Hume, are defective by reason of their neglect of bodily reference. Their vice is the deduction of a sharp-cut doctrine from an assumed sharp-cut mode of perception. The truth is that our sense-perceptions are extraordinarily vague and confused modes of experience. Also, there is every evidence that their prominent side of external reference is very superficial in its disclosure of the universe. It is important. For example, pragmatically a paving stone is a hard, solid, static, irremovable fact. This is what sense-perception, on its sharp-cut side, discloses. But if physical science be correct, this is a very superficial account of that portion of the

title: Page:Nature and Life (1934).pdf/64


text:
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 universe which we call the paving stone. Modern physical science is the issue of a co-ordinated effort, sustained for more than three centuries, to understand those activities of Nature by reason of which the transitions of sense-perception occur.

Two conclusions are now abundantly clear. One is that sense-perception omits any discrimination of the fundamental activities within Nature. For example, consider the difference between the paving stone as perceived visually, or by falling upon it, and the molecular activities of the paving stone as desctibed by the physicist. The second conclusion is the failure of science to endow its formulae for activity with any meaning. The divergence of the formulae about Nature from the appearance of Nature has sobbed the formulae of any explanatory chatacter. It has even robbed us of reason for believing that the past gives any ground for expectation of the future.

title: Page:Nature and Life (1934).pdf/65


text: A Chinese Biographical Dictionary/Fei Ch'ang-fang


text:
Page:Nature and Life (1934).pdf/66

 In fact, sclence conceived as resting on mere sense-perception, with no other source of observation, is bankrupt, so far as concerns its claim to self-sufficiency.

Science can find no individual enjoyment in Nature; science can find so aim in Nature; science can find no creativity in Natute; it finds mere rules of succession. These negations are true of natural science. They are inherent in its methodology. The reason for this blindness of physical science lies in the fact that such science only deals with half the evidence provided by human experience. It divides the seamless coat — or, to change the metaphor into a happier form, it examines the coat, which is superficial, and neglects the body, which is fundamental.

The disastrous separation of body and tind which has been fixed on European thought by Descartes is responsible for this blindness of science. In one sense the ab-

title: Page:Nature and Life (1934).pdf/66


text: A Chinese Biographical Dictionary/Fei Hsin


text:
Page:Nature and Life (1934).pdf/67

 straction has been a happy one, in that it has allowed the simplest things to be considered first, for about ten generations. Now these simplest things are those widespread habits of Nature that dominate the whole stretch of the universe within our remotest, vaguest observation. None of these laws of Nature gives the slightest evidence of necessity. They are the modes or procedure which within the scale of out observations do in fact prevail. I mean the fact that the extensiveness of the universe is dimensional, the fact that the number of spatial dimensions is three, the spatial laws of geometry, the ultimate formulae for physical occurrences. There is no necessity in any of these ways of behaviour. They exist as average, regulative conditions because the majority of actualities are swaying each other to modes of interconnection exemplifying those laws. New modes of self-expression may be gaining ground. We cannot tell. But, to judge

title: Page:Nature and Life (1934).pdf/67


text: A Chinese Biographical Dictionary/Fei Ti


text: A Chinese Biographical Dictionary/Fei-yang-ku


text:
Page:Nature and Life (1934).pdf/68

 by all analogy, after a sufficient span of existence our present laws will fade into unimportance. New interests will dominate. In our present sense of the term, our spatio-physical epoch will pass into that background of the past, which conditions all things dimly and without evident effect on the decision of prominent relations,

These massive laws, at present prevailing, ate the general physical laws of inorganic Natute. At a certain scale of obsetvation they are prevalent without hint of interference. The formation of suns, the motions of planets, the geologic changes on the earth, seem to proceed with a massive impetus which excludes any hint of modification by other agencies. To this extent sense-perception on which science relies discloses no aim in Nature.

Yet it is untrue to state that the general observation of mankind, in which sense-perception is only one factor, discloses no

title: Page:Nature and Life (1934).pdf/68


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 aim. The exact contrary is the case. All explanations of the sociologicai functionings of mankind include “aim” as an essential factor in explanation. For example, in a criminal trial where the evidence is circumstantial the demonstration of motive is one chief reliance of the prosecution. In such a trial would the defence plead the doctrine that purpose could aot direct the motions of the body, and that to indict the thief for stealing was analogous to indicting the sun for rising? Again no statesman can conduct international relations without some estimate — implicit ot explicit in his consciousness — of the types of patriotism respectively prevalent in various nations and in the statesmen of these nations. A lost dog can be seen trying to find his master or trying to find his way home. In fact we are directly conscious of our purposes as directive of our actions. Apart from such direction no doctrine could in any sense be acted upon. The

title: Page:Nature and Life (1934).pdf/69


text:
Portal:Philo Vance

Novels

 * The Benson Murder Case (1926)
 * The "Canary" Murder Case (1927)
 * The Greene Murder Case (1928)

title: Portal:Philo Vance


text:
Page:Ginzburg - The Legends of the Jews - Volume 5.djvu/47

Rh $undefined$ In Berakot 34b two views are cited; according to one, those who repent are considered superior to those who have never sinned, while the other view maintains the opposite case.As to the high esteem in which innocent youths are held, comp. Pesahim 113a.On the study of the Torah under God’s guidance, comp. note 194.  $undefined$ Perek Gan ‘Eden, which is extant in many recensions: Yalkut I, 20 (from a poor text of Yalkut published by Jellinek in BHM II, 52–53, under the wrong title Seder Gan ‘Eden); Baraita di-Shemuel 25 (text in manuscript by Rachlin, Bar Levoi, New York, 1906, pp. 82–84); Mahzor Vitry 735.Aggadat Shir and Targum Eccl., and probably also Zohar (comp. notes 79 and 81), seem to have made use of this description of paradise.Most of the legends relating to paradise and hell are attributed to R. Joshua b. Levi, who, according to a well-known tradition, already mentioned in the Talmud (Ketubot 77b), was permitted to enter paradise during his life-time.Hence the description of paradise begins: “R. Joshua b. Levi said: There are eighty myriads of trees in every corner of paradise, etc.” In Baraita di-Shemuel, after this description of paradise, there follows in a second chapter another description of the seven divisions of the pious in paradise (comp. note 97).The entire tractate is headed Masseket Gan ‘Eden.It is, however, quite obvious from the contents that the two descriptions are of different origin.That a description of hell followed the one of paradise is quite probable, and the designation of the latter as Perek Gan ‘Eden clearly points to this direction; but the description of hell found in our text of Baraita diShemuel 30–32 (published in BHM I, 147–149), from another source, has been artificially attached to that of paradise.One of the descriptions is purely legendary, while the other is midrashic-haggadic; they therefore must be of different origin.  $undefined$ These seven divisions are obviously identical with those previously described.There are many other descriptions of these divisions; comp. note 97.Concerning the proselyte Obadiah, comp. vol. IV, pp. 240–241.  $undefined$ The views of the ancient authorities differ on the question whether the “generation of the wilderness” have a portion in the life to come (=paradise); comp. note 177 on vol. III, p. 79.  $undefined$ The sentence is to be placed after ; hence the translation in the text.  $undefined$ Read instead of, and comp. Konen 28. On Chileab comp. Vol. II, p. 260 and vol. IV, p. 118. On Menasseh


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Page:Margaret Mead - Coming of age in Samoa; a psychological study of primitive youth for western civilisation.pdf/238

 tion. What is there in Samoa which is absent in America, what is there in America which is absent in Samoa, which will account for this difference?

Such a question has enormous implications and any attempt to answer it will be subject to many possibilities of error. But if we narrow our question to the way in which aspects of Samoan life which irremediably affect the life of the adolescent girl differ from the forces which influence our growing girls, it is possible to try to answer it.

The background of these differences is a broad one, with two important components; one is due to characteristics which are Samoan, the other to characteristics which are primitive.

The Samoan background which makes growing up so easy, so simple a matter, is the general casualness of the whole society. For Samoa is a place where no one plays for very high stakes, no one pays very heavy prices, no one suffers for his convictions or fights to the death for special ends. Disagreements between parent and child are settled by the child's moving across the street, between a man and his village by the man's removal to the next village, between a husband and his wife's seducer by a few fine mats. Neither poverty nor great disasters threaten the people to make them hold their lives dearly and tremble for continued existence. No implacable gods, swift to anger and strong to punish, disturb the even tenor of their days. Wars and cannibalism are long since passed away and now the greatest cause for


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Page:Margaret Mead - Coming of age in Samoa; a psychological study of primitive youth for western civilisation.pdf/239

 tears, short of death itself, is a journey of a relative to another island. No one is hurried along in life or punished harshly for slowness of development. Instead the gifted, the precocious, are held back, until the slowest among them have caught the pace. And in personal relations, caring is as slight. Love and hate, jealousy and revenge, sorrow and bereavement, are all matters of weeks. From the first months of its life, when the child is handed carelessly from one woman's hands to another's, the lesson is learned of not caring for one person greatly, not setting high hopes on any one relationship.

And just as we may feel that the Occident penalizes those unfortunates who are born into Western civilisation with a taste for meditation and a complete distaste for activity, so we may say that Samoa is kind to those who have learned the lesson of not caring, and hard upon those few individuals who have failed to learn it. Lola and Mala and little Siva, Lola's sister, all were girls with a capacity for emotion greater than their fellows. And Lola and Mala, passionately desiring affection and too violently venting upon the community their disappointment over their lack of it, were both delinquent, unhappy misfits in a society which gave all the rewards to those who took defeat lightly and turned to some other goal with a smile.

In this casual attitude towards life, in this avoidance of conflict, of poignant situations, Samoa contrasts strongly not only with America but also with most prim-


text: Index:The Benson Murder Case (1926).pdf

title: Index:The Benson Murder Case (1926).pdf


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It gives us considerable pleasure to be able to offer to the public the "inside" record of those of former District Attorney Markham's criminal cases in which Mr. Philo Vance figured so effectively. The true inwardness of these famous cases has never before been revealed; for Mr. S. S. Van Dine, Mr. Vance's lawyer and almost constant companion, being the only person who possessed a complete record of the facts, has only recently been permitted to make them public.

After inspecting Mr. Van Dine's voluminous notes, we decided to publish "The Benson Murder Case" as the first of the series—not because it was the most interesting and startling, nor yet the most complicated and dramatic from the fictional point of view, but because, coming first chronologically, it explains how Mr. Philo Vance happened to become involved in criminal matters, and also because it possesses certain features that reveal very clearly Mr. Vance's unique analytic methods of crime detection.


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If you will refer to the municipal statistics of the City of New York, you will find that the number of unsolved major crimes during the four years that John F.-X. Markham was District Attorney, was far smaller than under any of his predecessors' administrations. Markham projected the District Attorney's office into all manner of criminal investigations; and, as a result, many abstruse crimes on which the Police had hopelessly gone aground, were eventually disposed of.

But although he was personally credited with the many important indictments and subsequent convictions that he secured, the truth is that he was only an instrument in many of his most famous cases. The man who actually solved them and supplied the evidence for their prosecution, was in no way connected with the city's administration, and never once came into the public eye.

At that time I happened to be both legal advisor and personal friend of this other man; and it was thus that the strange and amazing facts of the situation became known to me. But not until recently have I been at liberty to make them public. Even now I am not permitted to divulge the man's name, and, for that reason, I have chosen, arbitrarily, to refer to him throughout these ex-officio reports as Philo Vance.


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 It is, of course, possible that some of his acquaintances may, through my revelations, be able to guess his identity; and if such should prove the case, I beg of them to guard that knowledge; for though he has now gone to Italy to live, and has given me permission to record the exploits of which he was the unique central character, he has very emphatically imposed his anonymity upon me; and I should not like to feel that, through any lack of discretion or delicacy, I have been the cause of his secret becoming generally known.

The present chronicle has to do with Vance's solution of the notorious Benson murder which, due to the unexpectedness of the crime, the prominence of the persons involved, and the startling evidence adduced, was invested with an interest rarely surpassed in the annals of New York's criminal history.

This sensational case was the first of many in which Vance figured as a kind of amicus curiæ in Markham's investigations.

New York.


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 * District Attorney of New York County.

 * Well-known Wall Street broker and man-about-town, who was mysteriously murdered in his home.

 * Brother of the murdered man.

 * Housekeeper for Alvin Benson.

 * A young singer.

 * Miss St. Clair's fiancé.

 * Intimate friend of Alvin Benson's.

 * A friend of Leander Pfyfe's.

 * Secretary of the firm of Benson and Benson.

 * A retired army officer.

 * An alderman, Borough of the Bronx.

 * Elevator-boy at the Chatham Arms.

 * Of the firm of Stitt and McCoy, Public Accountants.


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 * Assistant District Attorney.

 * Of the Police Department of New York City.

 * Commanding Officer of the Detective Bureau.

 * Sergeant of the Homicide Bureau.

 * Detective of the Homicide Bureau.

 * Detective of the Homicide Bureau.

 * Detective of the Homicide Bureau.

 * Commanding Officer of Detectives assigned to District Attorney's office.

 * Detective assigned to District Attorney's office.

 * Detective assigned to District Attorney's office.

 * Detective assigned to District Attorney's office.

 * Detective assigned to District Attorney's office.

 * Fire-arms expert.

 * Medical Examiner.

 * Secretary to the District Attorney.

 * Vance's valet.


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It happened that, on the morning of the momentous June the fourteenth when the discovery of the murdered body of Alvin H. Benson created a sensation which, to this day, has not entirely died away, I had breakfasted with Philo Vance in his apartment. It was not unusual for me to share Vance's luncheons and dinners, but to have breakfast with him was something of an occasion. He was a late riser, and it was his habit to remain incommunicado until his midday meal.

The reason for this early meeting was a matter of business—or, rather, of æsthetics. On the afternoon of the previous day Vance had attended a preview of Vollard's collection of Cézanne water-colors at the Kessler Galleries, and having seen several pictures he particularly wanted, he had invited me to an early breakfast to give me instructions regarding their purchase.

A word concerning my relationship with Vance is necessary to clarify my rôle of narrator in this chronicle. The legal tradition is deeply imbedded in my family, and when my preparatory-school days were over, I was sent, almost as a matter of course,


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 to Harvard to study law. It was there I met Vance, a reserved, cynical and caustic freshman who was the bane of his professors and the fear of his fellow-classmen. Why he should have chosen me, of all the students at the University, for his extra-scholastic association, I have never been able to understand fully. My own liking for Vance was simply explained: he fascinated and interested me, and supplied me with a novel kind of intellectual diversion. In his liking for me, however, no such basis of appeal was present. I was (and am now) a commonplace fellow, possessed of a conservative and rather conventional mind. But, at least, my mentality was not rigid, and the ponderosity of the legal procedure did not impress me greatly—which is why, no doubt, I had little taste for my inherited profession—; and it is possible that these traits found certain affinities in Vance's unconscious mind. There is, to be sure, the less consoling explanation that I appealed to Vance as a kind of foil, or anchorage, and that he sensed in my nature a complementary antithesis to his own. But whatever the explanation, we were much together; and, as the years went by, that association ripened into an inseparable friendship.

Upon graduation I entered my father's law firm—Van Dine and Davis—and after five years of dull apprenticeship I was taken into the firm as the junior partner. At present I am the second Van Dine of Van Dine, Davis and Van Dine, with offices at 120 Broadway. At about the time my name first appeared on the letter-heads of the firm, Vance returned from Europe, where he had been living


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 during my legal novitiate, and, an aunt of his having died and made him her principal beneficiary, I was called upon to discharge the technical obligations involved in putting him in possession of his inherited property.

This work was the beginning of a new and somewhat unusual relationship between us. Vance had a strong distaste for any kind of business transaction, and in time I became the custodian of all his monetary interests and his agent at large. I found that his affairs were various enough to occupy as much of my time as I cared to give to legal matters, and as Vance was able to indulge the luxury of having a personal legal factotum, so to speak, I permanently closed my desk at the office, and devoted myself exclusively to his needs and whims.

If, up to the time when Vance summoned me to discuss the purchase of the Cézannes, I had harbored any secret or repressed regrets for having deprived the firm of Van Dine, Davis and Van Dine of my modest legal talents, they were permanently banished on that eventful morning; for, beginning with the notorious Benson murder, and extending over a period of nearly four years, it was my privilege to be a spectator of what I believe was the most amazing series of criminal cases that ever passed before the eyes of a young lawyer. Indeed, the grim dramas I witnessed during that period constitute one of the most astonishing secret documents in the police history of this country.

Of these dramas Vance was the central character. By an analytical and interpretative process which, as far as I know, has never before been applied to


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 criminal activities, he succeeded in solving many of the important crimes on which both the police and the District Attorney's office had hopelessly fallen down.

Due to my peculiar relations with Vance it happened that not only did I participate in all the cases with which he was connected, but I was also present at most of the informal discussions concerning them which took place between him and the District Attorney; and, being of methodical temperament, I kept a fairly complete record of them. In addition, I noted down (as accurately as memory permitted) Vance's unique psychological methods of determining guilt, as he explained them from time to time. It is fortunate that I performed this gratuitous labor of accumulation and transcription, for now that circumstances have unexpectedly rendered possible my making the cases public, I am able to present them in full detail and with all their various side-lights and succeeding steps—a task that would be impossible were it not for my numerous clippings and adversaria.

Fortunately, too, the first case to draw Vance into its ramifications was that of Alvin Benson's murder. Not only did it prove one of the most famous of New York's causes célèbres, but it gave Vance an excellent opportunity of displaying his rare talents of deductive reasoning, and, by its nature and magnitude, aroused his interest in a branch of activity which heretofore had been alien to his temperamental promptings and habitual predilections.

The case intruded upon Vance's life suddenly and


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 unexpectedly, although he himself had, by a casual request made to the District Attorney over a month before, been the involuntary agent of this destruction of his normal routine. The thing, in fact, burst upon us before we had quite finished our breakfast on that mid-June morning, and put an end temporarily to all business connected with the purchase of the Cézanne paintings. When, later in the day, I visited the Kessler Galleries, two of the water-colors that Vance had particularly desired had been sold; and I am convinced that, despite his success in the unravelling of the Benson murder mystery and his saving of at least one innocent person from arrest, he has never to this day felt entirely compensated for the loss of those two little sketches on which he had set his heart.

As I was ushered into the living-room that morning by Currie, a rare old English servant who acted as Vance's butler, valet, major-domo and, on occasions, specialty cook, Vance was sitting in a large armchair, attired in a surah silk dressing-gown and grey suède slippers, with Vollard's book on Cézanne open across his knees.

"Forgive my not rising, Van," he greeted me casually. "I have the whole weight of the modern evolution in art resting on my legs. Furthermore, this plebeian early rising fatigues me, y' know."

He riffled the pages of the volume, pausing here and there at a reproduction.

"This chap Vollard," he remarked at length, "has been rather liberal with our art-fearing country. He has sent a really goodish collection of his


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 Cézannes here. I viewed 'em yesterday with the proper reverence and, I might add, unconcern, for Kessler was watching me; and I've marked the ones I want you to buy for me as soon as the Gallery opens this morning."

He handed me a small catalogue he had been using as a book-mark.

"A beastly assignment, I know," he added, with an indolent smile. "These delicate little smudges with all their blank paper will prob'bly be meaningless to your legal mind—they're so unlike a neatly-typed brief, don't y' know. And you'll no doubt think some of 'em are hung upside-down,—one of 'em is, in fact, and even Kessler doesn't know it. But don't fret, Van old dear. They're very beautiful and valuable little knickknacks, and rather inexpensive when one considers what they'll be bringing in a few years. Really an excellent investment for some money-loving soul, y' know—inf'nitely better than that Lawyer's Equity Stock over which you grew so eloquent at the time of my dear Aunt Agatha's death."

Vance's one passion (if a purely intellectual enthusiasm may be called a passion) was art—not art in its narrow, personal aspects, but in its broader, more universal significance. And art was not only his dominating interest, but his chief diversion. He was something of an authority on Japanese and Chinese prints; he knew tapestries and ceramics; and once I heard him give an impromptu causerie to a few guests on Tanagra figurines, which, had it


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 been transcribed, would have made a most delightful and instructive monograph.

Vance had sufficient means to indulge his instinct for collecting, and possessed a fine assortment of pictures and objets d'art. His collection was heterogeneous only in its superficial characteristics: every piece he owned embodied some principle of form or line that related it to all the others. One who knew art could feel the unity and consistency in all the items with which he surrounded himself, however widely separated they were in point of time or métier or surface appeal. Vance, I have always felt, was one of those rare human beings, a collector with a definite philosophic point of view.

His apartment in East Thirty-eighth Street—actually the two top floors of an old mansion, beautifully remodelled and in part rebuilt to secure spacious rooms and lofty ceilings—was filled, but not crowded, with rare specimens of oriental and occidental, ancient and modern, art. His paintings ranged from the Italian primitives to Cézanne and Matisse; and among his collection of original drawings were works as widely separated as those of Michelangelo and Picasso. Vance's Chinese prints constituted one of the finest private collections in this country. They included beautiful examples of the work of Ririomin, Rianchu, Jinkomin, Kakei and Mokkei.

"The Chinese," Vance once said to me, "are the truly great artists of the East. They were the men whose work expressed most intensely a broad philosophic spirit. By contrast the Japanese were superficial. It's a long step between the little more


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 than decorative souci of a Hokusai and the profoundly thoughtful and conscious artistry of a Ririomin. Even when Chinese art degenerated under the Manchus, we find in it a deep philosophic quality—a spiritual sensibilité, so to speak. And in the modern copies of copies—what is called the bunjinga style—we still have pictures of profound meaning."

Vance's catholicity of taste in art was remarkable. His collection was as varied as that of a museum. It embraced a black-figured amphora by Amasis, a proto-Corinthian vase in the Ægean style, Koubatcha and Rhodian plates, Athenian pottery, a sixteenth-century Italian holy-water stoup of rock crystal, pewter of the Tudor period (several pieces bearing the double-rose hall-mark), a bronze plaque by Cellini, a triptych of Limoges enamel, a Spanish retable of an altar-piece by Vallfogona, several Etruscan bronzes, an Indian Greco Buddhist, a statuette of the Goddess Kuan Yin from the Ming Dynasty, a number of very fine Renaissance wood-cuts, and several specimens of Byzantine, Carolingian and early French ivory carvings.

His Egyptian treasures included a gold jug from Zakazik, a statuette of the Lady Nai (as lovely as the one in the Louvre), two beautifully carved steles of the First Theban Age, various small sculptures comprising rare representations of Hapi and Amset, and several Arrentine bowls carved with Kalathiskos dancers. On top of one of his embayed Jacobean book cases in the library, where most of his modern paintings and drawings were hung, was a fascinating group of African sculpture—ceremonial masks


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 and statuette-fetishes from French Guinea, the Sudan, Nigeria, the Ivory Coast, and the Congo.

A definite purpose has animated me in speaking at such length about Vance's art instinct, for, in order to understand fully the melodramatic adventures which began for him on that June morning, one must have a general idea of the man's penchants and inner promptings. His interest in art was an important—one might almost say the dominant—factor in his personality. I have never met a man quite like him—a man so apparently diversified, and yet so fundamentally consistent.

Vance was what many would call a dilettante. But the designation does him injustice. He was a man of unusual culture and brilliance. An aristocrat by birth and instinct, he held himself severely aloof from the common world of men. In his manner there was an indefinable contempt for inferiority of all kinds. The great majority of those with whom he came in contact regarded him as a snob. Yet there was in his condescension and disdain no trace of spuriousness. His snobbishness was intellectual as well as social. He detested stupidity even more, I believe, than he did vulgarity or bad taste. I have heard him on several occasions quote Fouché's famous line: C'est plus qu'un crime; c'est une faute. And he meant it literally.

Vance was frankly a cynic, but he was rarely bitter: his was a flippant, Juvenalian cynicism. Perhaps he may best be described as a bored and supercilious, but highly conscious and penetrating, spectator of life. He was keenly interested in all human reactions; but it was the interest of the scientist,


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 not the humanitarian. Withal he was a man of rare personal charm. Even people who found it difficult to admire him, found it equally difficult not to like him. His somewhat quixotic mannerisms and his slightly English accent and inflection—a heritage of his post-graduate days at Oxford—impressed those who did not know him well, as affectations. But the truth is, there was very little of the poseur about him.

He was unusually good-looking, although his mouth was ascetic and cruel, like the mouths on some of the Medici portraits ; moreover, there was a slightly derisive hauteur in the lift of his eyebrows. Despite the aquiline severity of his lineaments his face was highly sensitive. His forehead was full and sloping—it was the artist's, rather than the scholar's, brow. His cold grey eyes were widely spaced. His nose was straight and slender, and his chin narrow but prominent, with an unusually deep cleft. When I saw John Barrymore recently in Hamlet I was somehow reminded of Vance; and once before, in a scene of Cæsar and Cleopatra played by Forbes-Robertson, I received a similar impression.

Vance was slightly under six feet, graceful, and giving the impression of sinewy strength and nerv-


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 ous endurance. He was an expert fencer, and had been the Captain of the University's fencing team. He was mildly fond of outdoor sports, and had a knack of doings things well without any extensive practice. His golf handicap was only three; and one season he had played on our championship polo team against England. Nevertheless, he had a positive antipathy to walking, and would not go a hundred yards on foot if there was any possible means of riding.

In his dress he was always fashionable—scrupulously correct to the smallest detail—yet unobtrusive. He spent considerable time at his clubs: his favorite was the Stuyvesant, because, as he explained to me, its membership was drawn largely from the political and commercial ranks, and he was never drawn into a discussion which required any mental effort. He went occasionally to the more modern operas, and was a regular subscriber to the symphony concerts and chamber-music recitals.

Incidentally, he was one of the most unerring poker players I have ever seen. I mention this fact not merely because it was unusual and significant that a man of Vance's type should have preferred so democratic a game to bridge or chess, for instance, but because his knowledge of the science of human psychology involved in poker had an intimate bearing on the chronicles I am about to set down.

Vance's knowledge of psychology was indeed uncanny. He was gifted with an instinctively accurate judgment of people, and his study and reading had co-ordinated and rationalized this gift to an amazing extent. He was well grounded in the academic prin-


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 ciples of psychology, and all his courses at college had either centered about this subject or been subordinated to it. While I was confining myself to a restricted area of torts and contracts, constitutional and common law, equity, evidence and pleading, Vance was reconnoitring the whole field of cultural endeavor. He had courses in the history of religions, the Greek classics, biology, civics and political economy, philosophy, anthropology, literature, theoretical and experimental psychology, and ancient and modern languages. But it was, I think, his courses under Münsterberg and William James that interested him the most.

Vance's mind was basically philosophical—that is, philosophical in the more general sense. Being singularly free from the conventional sentimentalities and current superstitions, he could look beneath the surface of human acts into actuating impulses and motives. Moreover, he was resolute both in his avoidance of any attitude that savored of credulousness, and in his adherence to cold, logical exactness in his mental processes.

"Until we can approach all human problems," he once remarked, "with the clinical aloofness and cynical contempt of a doctor examining a guinea-pig


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 strapped to a board, we have little chance of getting at the truth."

Vance led an active, but by no means animated, social life—a concession to various family ties. But he was not a social animal.—I can not remember ever having met a man with so undeveloped a gregarious instinct,—and when he went forth into the social world it was generally under compulsion. In fact, one of his "duty" affairs had occupied him on the night before that memorable June breakfast; otherwise, we would have consulted about the Cézannes the evening before; and Vance groused a good deal about it while Currie was serving our strawberries and eggs Bénédictine. Later on I was to give profound thanks to the God of Coincidence that the blocks had been arranged in just that pattern; for had Vance been slumbering peacefully at nine o'clock when the District Attorney called, I would probably have missed four of the most interesting and exciting years of my life; and many of New York's shrewdest and most desperate criminals might still be at large.

Vance and I had just settled back in our chairs for our second cup of coffee and a cigarette when Currie, answering an impetuous ringing of the front-door bell, ushered the District Attorney into the living-room.

"By all that's holy!" he exclaimed, raising his hands in mock astonishment. "New York's leading flâneur and art connoisseur is up and about!"

"And I am suffused with blushes at the disgrace of it," Vance replied.

It was evident, however, that the District Attorney was not in a jovial mood. His face suddenly sobered.


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 "Vance, a serious thing has brought me here. I'm in a great hurry, and merely dropped by to keep my promise. . . . The fact is, Alvin Benson has been murdered."

Vance lifted his eyebrows languidly.

"Really, now," he drawled. "How messy! But he no doubt deserved it. In any event, that's no reason why you should repine. Take a chair and have a cup of Currie's incomp'rable coffee." And before the other could protest, he rose and pushed a bell-button.

Markham hesitated a second or two.

"Oh, well. A couple of minutes won't make any difference. But only a gulp." And he sank into a chair facing us.


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John F.-X. Markham, as you remember, had been elected District Attorney of New York County on the Independent Reform Ticket during one of the city's periodical reactions against Tammany Hall. He served his four years, and would probably have been elected to a second term had not the ticket been hopelessly split by the political juggling of his opponents. He was an indefatigable worker, and projected the District Attorney's office into all manner of criminal and civil investigations. Being utterly incorruptible, he not only aroused the fervid admiration of his constituents, but produced an almost unprecedented sense of security in those who had opposed him on partisan lines.

He had been in office only a few months when one of the newspapers referred to him as the Watch Dog; and the sobriquet clung to him until the end of his administration. Indeed, his record as a successful prosecutor during the four years of his incumbency was such a remarkable one that even to-day it is not infrequently referred to in legal and political discussions.

Markham was a tall, strongly-built man in the


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 middle forties, with a clean-shaven, somewhat youthful face which belied his uniformly grey hair. He was not handsome according to conventional standards, but he had an unmistakable air of distinction, and was possessed of an amount of social culture rarely found in our latter-day political office-holders. Withal he was a man of brusque and vindictive temperament; but his brusqueness was an incrustation on a solid foundation of good-breeding, not—as is usually the case—the roughness of substructure showing through an inadequately superimposed crust of gentility.

When his nature was relieved of the stress of duty and care, he was the most gracious of men. But early in my acquaintance with him I had seen his attitude of cordiality suddenly displaced by one of grim authority. It was as if a new personality—hard, indomitable, symbolic of eternal justice—had in that moment been born in Markham's body. I was to witness this transformation many times before our association ended. In fact, this very morning, as he sat opposite to me in Vance's living-room, there was more than a hint of it in the aggressive sternness of his expression; and I knew that he was deeply troubled over Alvin Benson's murder.

He swallowed his coffee rapidly, and was setting down the cup, when Vance, who had been watching him with quizzical amusement, remarked:

"I say; why this sad preoccupation over the passing of one Benson? You weren't, by any chance, the murderer, what?"

Markham ignored Vance's levity.

"I'm on my way to Benson's. Do you care to come


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 along? You asked for the experience, and I dropped in to keep my promise."

I then recalled that several weeks before at the Stuyvesant Club, when the subject of the prevalent homicides in New York was being discussed, Vance had expressed a desire to accompany the District Attorney on one of his investigations; and that Markham had promised to take him on his next important case. Vance's interest in the psychology of human behavior had prompted the desire, and his friendship with Markham, which had been of long standing, had made the request possible.

"You remember everything, don't you?" Vance replied lazily. "An admirable gift, even if an uncomfortable one." He glanced at the clock on the mantel: it lacked a few minutes of nine. "But what an indecent hour! Suppose someone should see me."

Markham moved forward impatiently in his chair.

"Well, if you think the gratification of your curiosity would compensate you for the disgrace of being seen in public at nine o'clock in the morning, you'll have to hurry. I certainly won't take you in dressing-gown and bed-room slippers. And I most certainly won't wait over five minutes for you to get dressed."

"Why the haste, old dear?" Vance asked, yawning. "The chap's dead, don't y' know; he can't possibly run away."

"Come, get a move on, you orchid," the other urged. "This affair is no joke. It's damned serious; and from the looks of it, it's going to cause an ungodly scandal.—What are you going to do?"

"Do? I shall humbly follow the great avenger of


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 the common people," returned Vance, rising and making an obsequious bow.

He rang for Currie, and ordered his clothes brought to him.

"I'm attending a levee which Mr. Markham is holding over a corpse, and I want something rather spiffy. Is it warm enough for a silk suit? . . . And a lavender tie, by all means."

"I trust you won't also wear your green carnation," grumbled Markham.

"Tut! Tut!" Vance chided him. "You've been reading Mr. Hichens. Such heresy in a district attorney! Anyway, you know full well I never wear boutonnières. The decoration has fallen into disrepute. The only remaining devotees of the practice are roués and saxophone players. . . . But tell me about the departed Benson."

Vance was now dressing, with Currie's assistance, at a rate of speed I had rarely seen him display in such matters. Beneath his bantering pose I recognized the true eagerness of the man for a new experience and one that promised such dramatic possibilities for his alert and observing mind.

"You knew Alvin Benson casually, I believe," the District Attorney said. "Well, early this morning his housekeeper 'phoned the local precinct station that she had found him shot through the head, fully dressed and sitting in his favorite chair in his living-room. The message, of course, was put through at once to the Telegraph Bureau at Headquarters, and my assistant on duty notified me immediately. I was tempted to let the case follow the regular police routine. But half an hour later Major Benson,


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 Alvin's brother, 'phoned me and asked me, as a special favor, to take charge. I've known the Major for twenty years, and I couldn't very well refuse. So I took a hurried breakfast and started for Benson's house. He lived in West Forty-eighth Street; and as I passed your corner I remembered your request, and dropped by to see if you cared to go along."

"Most consid'rate," murmured Vance, adjusting his four-in-hand before a small polychrome mirror by the door. Then he turned to me. "Come, Van. We'll all gaze upon the defunct Benson. I'm sure some of Markham's sleuths will unearth the fact that I detested the bounder and accuse me of the crime; and I'll feel safer, don't y' know, with legal talent at hand. . . . No objections—eh, what, Markham?"

"Certainly not," the other agreed readily, although I felt that he would rather not have had me along. But I was too deeply interested in the affair to offer any ceremonious objections, and I followed Vance and Markham downstairs.

As we settled back in the waiting taxicab and started up Madison Avenue, I marvelled a little, as I had often done before, at the strange friendship of these two dissimilar men beside me—Markham forthright, conventional, a trifle austere, and over-serious in his dealings with life; and Vance casual, mercurial, debonair, and whimsically cynical in the face of the grimmest realities. And yet this temperamental diversity seemed, in some wise, the very cornerstone of their friendship: it was as if each saw in the other some unattainable field of experience and sensation that had been denied himself. Mark-


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 ham represented to Vance the solid and immutable realism of life, whereas Vance symbolized for Markham the care-free, exotic, gypsy spirit of intellectual adventure. Their intimacy, in fact, was even greater than showed on the surface; and despite Markham's exaggerated deprecations of the other's attitudes and opinions, I believe he respected Vance's intelligence more profoundly than that of any other man he knew.

As we rode up town that morning Markham appeared preoccupied and gloomy. No word had been spoken since we left the apartment; but as we turned west into Forty-eighth Street Vance asked:

"What is the social etiquette of these early-morning murder functions, aside from removing one's hat in the presence of the body?"

"You keep your hat on," growled Markham.

"My word! Like a synagogue, what? Most int'restin'! Perhaps one takes off one's shoes so as not to confuse the footprints."

"No," Markham told him. "The guests remain fully clothed—in which the function differs from the ordinary evening affairs of your smart set."

"My dear Markham!"—Vance's tone was one of melancholy reproof—"The horrified moralist in your nature is at work again. That remark of yours was pos'tively Epworth Leaguish."

Markham was too abstracted to follow up Vance's badinage.

"There are one or two things," he said soberly, "that I think I'd better warn you about. From the looks of it, this case is going to cause considerable noise, and there'll be a lot of jealousy and battling