The Ato Palm (Volume 5) (Paperback)

This historic book may have numerous typos, missing text or index. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. 1885. Not illustrated. Excerpt: ... 1 A LESSON FROM THE GREEKS.* By W. B. Richards, (Va. Beta, '85.) Age is honorable only if it has brought with it wisdom, and the world of to-day can claim to be better than the world of yesterday only if it has profited by its experience-- rejecting its folly and adding to its wisdom. The true end of the study of History is not the mere accumulation of isolated facts. In no science is such accumulation the end of its study. Important and necessary as is the attainment in any field of learning of complete knowledge upon particular points, the man who rests content with such attainment has failed, and failed miserably, of the true and deep conception of Science. He has mistaken for the end what is in reality only the point of departure. The collation of facts shoud be only preliminary to an attempt to discover the relations which connect them and to trace the sequence of event upon event. Just as the child with its "Memory string" gathers a red button here and a white one there, and another elsewhere and binds them all together into one sweet memorial of friendship from end to end, so should we pierce isolated facts of history with the golden thread of causation--binding them into unity and system. But the relations of cause and effect are not arbitrary or variable. The necessary intuition of the essential sequence of the same effect upon the same cause is the rock upon which all inductive science is founded. If we can once connect two facts by this chain of causation--a chain stronger than that which bound Prometheus to his crag or Ixion to his wheel--they stand so linked for all eternity. The relation so discovered stands as a guide for future activity. If there be any prophetic foresight among mortals, here it must rest. The stars in which quick astrologers sha...