United States or Vietnam ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
It involves principles which are beyond the immature pupil's understanding and interest. In and of itself, it may no more represent the living world of the pupil's experience than the astronomer's knowledge of Mars represents a baby's acquaintance with the room in which he stays.
Just as the ignorant and fitful curiosity of some little monkey is hardly to be compared to the astronomer's magnificent search, so the craft and cunning we see in our pussies would bear small relation to the high-minded planning of some ruler of the race we are imagining. And yet craft /is/ self-defeating in the end.
His telescopes were unexceptionable, and his method excellent, but it depended entirely on the perfect steadiness of the observer; and, as even the biggest ships of the mighty monarch of Spain could not be taught to keep quiet, the great astronomer's telescopes were perfectly useless.
Now observatories, with their revolving domes, crown the heights at every centre of civilization, and the mighty telescope, poised on exquisite mechanism, turns infinite space into a Coliseum, brings its invisible luminaries close to the astronomer's seat, and reveals the harmonies and splendors of those distant works of God.
Und now, gome, I tells you apout der schpots der sun schpots," and with many odd gesticulations and contortions of his quaint visage he described the terrific cyclones that were sweeping over the surface of the sun at that time, and whose corresponding perturbations in the astronomer's mind had so exasperated his wife.
Swithin immediately opened the door of the hut, and scanned the nook behind the bed. As he had expected his bird had flown. All night the astronomer's mind was on the stretch with curiosity as to what the Bishop could wish to say to him. A dozen conjectures entered his brain, to be abandoned in turn as unlikely.
It is this practical utility of astronomy that justifies the spending of national money on observatories and transits of Venus, and it is the best apology for an astronomer's life to those who do not appreciate the use of knowledge for its own beauty.
In any case, the pilot's story was a far more likely factor in sending Christopher west. Nor is it to his discredit that he was willing to risk his life on a dying sailor's wild, improbable tale, rather than on an astronomer's carefully worked out theory.
Ferdinand, standing upon the doorstep, whistled to the night. Strange to say, in about two minutes there appeared round the corner the very same cabman who had conveyed the Prophet and Lady Enid to the astronomer's on the previous day, driving the very same horse. "This horse will do admirably," said the Prophet to Mr. Ferdinand. "He isn't lame, sir."
An architect? No. And so in like manner with other practical skills, the geometrician's, astronomer's, professional reciter's. None of these he discovers is what Euthydemus aims at. He hopes to become a great politician and statesman. Then of course he hopes to be a just man himself? Euthydemus flatters himself he is that already.
Word Of The Day