United States or Andorra ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
There are no references in literature to aqueducts which brought water to Praeneste. Were we left to this evidence alone, we should conclude that Praeneste had depended upon reservoirs for water. But in inscriptions we have mention of baths, the existence of which implies aqueducts, and there is the specus of an aqueduct to be seen outside the Porta S. Francesco.
The idola specus are individual prepossessions which interfere with the apprehension of the true state of affairs, such as the excessive tendency of thought toward the resemblances or the differences of things, or the investigator's habit of transferring ideas current in his own department to subjects of a different kind.
Accusationes, poenae, jus redditum. 13. Scuto frameaque ornati juvenes, principum comites: eorum virtus et fama. 14. Gentis bellica studia. 15. In pace, venatio, otium: Collata principibus munera. 16. Urbes nullae: vici, domus, specus suffugium hiemi et receptaculum frugibus. 17. Vestitus hominum, feminarum. 18. Matrimonia severa: dos a marito oblata. 19. Pudicitia.
Let us own, however, that one-idea'd people are often amusing as well as mischievous or rather, when not mischievous. The rapt devotion they pay to their idola specûs oscillates between the sublime and the ridiculous. We have all seen such people, and alternately admired and laughed at them. We have all witnessed or read pleasant illustrations of their doings.
They may find enough of it, and to spare also, in Burton's 'Anatomy of Melancholy. He, like Knox, and many another scholar of the 16th and of the first half of the 17th century, was unable to free his brain altogether from the idola specus which haunted the cell of the bookworm.
On the other hand, the criticism of war, scornful or ironic, of the great thinkers and speculative writers of modern times, when it is not merely the phantom of their logic, an eidôlon specus created by their system, arises in the most impressive instances less from admiration or desire or hope of perpetual peace than from the arraignment of all life, and all the ideals, activities, and purposes of men.
It consists of a row of large arches crossing the valley over which the water had to be carried, surmounted by a series of smaller arches, and these again by a series of still smaller ones, carrying the specus of the aqueduct. This splendid bridge still stands perfect, so that one can walk through the channel along which the water flowed, and it might be again used for its original purpose.
He must needs try his hand at the synthetic method though he forbids it to the rest of the world: but the only deductive hint which he has as yet given to mankind is, quaintly enough, the most unnatural "eidolon specus" which ever entered the head of a dehumanised pedant namely, that once famous "Preventive Check," which, if a nation did ever apply it as it never will could issue, as every doctor knows, in nothing less than the questionable habits of abortion, child-murder, and unnatural crime.
But of the fourth species of error noted by Bacon, the Idola Specus, the Idols of the Cave, that whole tribe of illusions, which are "bred amongst the weeds and tares of one's own brain," Browne tells us nothing by way of criticism; was himself, rather, a lively example of their operation.
But the inhabitants, although they enjoy this inestimable blessing in an African climate, are not famous for their cleanliness; Morocco, if possessing any particular character, still must be considered as a commercial city, for its learning is at a very low ebb. Its interior wears a deeply dejected, nay a profoundly gloomy aspect. "Horrendum incultumque specus."
Word Of The Day