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The description has been carried down past the point of convergence of the two originally isolated paths of Egyptian and Babylonian civilization, and what new information the latest discoveries have communicated to us on this subject has been told in the preceding chapters.
It is therefore a grave mistake to regard it as a parochial eccentricity, as a specific Americanism. Nor is it the product of the misplaced ingenuity of individual paradox-mongers. It has come into being by the convergence of distinct lines of thought pursued in different countries by different thinkers. One of the most interesting of these has originated in the scientific world.
In those days the Commodore was making some of those vast combinations of his consolidations of warring odds and ends of railroads into harmonious systems, and concentrations of floating and rudderless commerce in effective centers and among other things his farseeing eye had detected the convergence of that huge tobacco-commerce, already spoken of, toward Memphis, and he had resolved to set his grasp upon it and make it his own.
It was first called Palazzo del T, from the convergence of roads there in the form of that letter; and the modern Mantuans call it Del Tè, from the superstition, transmitted to us by the Custode of the Ducal Palace, that the Gonzagas merely used it on pleasant afternoons to take tea in! so curiously has latter-day guidemanship interpreted the jolly purpose expressed by the Duke to Giulio.
This additional notion is obtained by distinguishing between the notion of 'position' and the notion of convergence to an ideal zero of extension as exhibited by an abstractive set of events. In order to understand this distinction consider a point of the instantaneous space which we conceive as apparent to us in an almost instantaneous glance. This point is an event-particle. It has two aspects.
The passage of the Hellespont; the forcing of the Granicus; the winter spent in a political organization of conquered Asia Minor; the march of the right wing and centre of the army along the Syrian Mediterranean coast; the engineering difficulties overcome at the siege of Tyre; the storming of Gaza; the isolation of Persia from Greece; the absolute exclusion of her navy from the Mediterranean; the check on all her attempts at intriguing with or bribing Athenians or Spartans, heretofore so often resorted to with success; the submission of Egypt; another winter spent in the political organization of that venerable country; the convergence of the whole army from the Black and Red Seas toward the nitre-covered plains of Mesopotamia in the ensuing spring; the passage of the Euphrates fringed with its weeping-willows at the broken bridge of Thapsacus; the crossing of the Tigris; the nocturnal reconnaissance before the great and memorable battle of Arbela; the oblique movement on the field; the piercing of the enemy's centre a manoeuvre destined to be repeated many centuries subsequently at Austerlitz; the energetic pursuit of the Persian monarch; these are exploits not surpassed by any soldier of later times.
Reasoning from the idea that all instincts and natural imaginations are adapted to a biological end and seeing that sex is essentially a method of procreation, one might reasonably expect a convergence, if not a complete concentration, upon the idea of offspring. It is almost as if there were other ends to be served. It is clear that Nature has not worked this impulse out to any sight of its end.
Thus an abstractive element has a unique abstractive force and is the construct from events which represents one definite intrinsic character which is arrived at as a limit by the use of the principle of convergence to simplicity by diminution of extent.
The two columns reached the convergence of the street at the same time and as they entered the square before the jail a third and a fourth column debouched from other directions, while still others deployed into view on the hills behind. They all took their places in rank around the square. Among the well-known characters of the times was a certain Colonel Gift. Mr.
Yet even here the convergence of two distinct lines of research was wholly fortuitous, and skilful combination owed the most brilliant part of its success to the unsought bounty of what we call Fortune. The exactness of the coincidence thus brought to light was fully confirmed by further inquiries.