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Boulder Place Directory 19
Page 06
And now what about philosophy? I am not going into philosophical questions here. For that reason I am not going to describe biology as natural history, or anthropology as the natural history of man. Let philosophers discuss what "nature" is going to mean for them. In science the word is question-begging; and the only sound rule in science is to beg as few philosophical questions as you possibly can. Everything in the world is natural, of course, in the sense that things are somehow all akin--all of a piece. We are simply bound to take in the parts as parts of a whole, and it is just this fact that makes philosophy not only possible but inevitable. All the same, this fact does not prevent the parts from having their own specific natures and specific ways of behaving. The people who identify the natural with the physical are putting all their money on one specific kind of nature or behaviour that is to be found in the world. In the case of man they are backing the wrong horse. The horse to back is the horse that goes. As a going concern, however, anthropology, as part of evolutionary biology, is a history of vital tendencies which are not natural in the sense of merely physical.
After the battle of the Metaurus, the chief interest of the war was transferred to Spain and Africa. The Roman armies were led by a youthful hero, perhaps the greatest man that Rome ever produced, with the exception of Julius Caesar. The remaining period of the war is little more than the history of P. Scipio. This extraordinary man was the son of P. Scipio, who fell in Spain in B.C. 212, as already related. In his early years he acquired, to an extraordinary extent, the confidence and admiration of his countrymen. His enthusiastic mind led him to believe that he was a special favorite of heaven; and he never engaged in any public or private business without first going to the Capitol, where he sat some time alone, enjoying communion with the gods. For all he proposed or executed he alleged the divine approval: he believed himself in the revelations which he asserted had been vouchsafed to him; and the extraordinary success which attended all his enterprises deepened this belief.
For removing discontentments, or at least the danger of them; there is in every state (as we know) two portions of subjects; the noblesse and the commonalty. When one of these is discontent, the danger is not great; for common people are of slow motion, if they be not excited by the greater sort; and the greater sort are of small strength, except the multitude be apt, and ready to move of themselves. Then is the danger, when the greater sort, do but wait for the troubling of the waters amongst the meaner, that then they may declare themselves. The poets feign, that the rest of the gods would have bound Jupiter; which he hearing of, by the counsel of Pallas, sent for Briareus, with his hundred hands, to come in to his aid. An emblem, no doubt, to show how safe it is for monarchs, to make sure of the good will of common people. To give moderate liberty for griefs and discontentments to evaporate (so it be without too great insolency or bravery), is a safe way. For he that turneth the humors back, and maketh the wound bleed inwards, endangereth malign ulcers, and pernicious imposthumations.
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