TWO:The shelling went on during the night, and all that time the inhabitants remained in their cellars.The general theory of their action may be explained in the following propositions:
THREE:"A beauty!" the Countess exclaimed, "And the same action as my own. I believe I know as much about it as my chauffeur. Captain Gifford, let me try it alone, do. Harris, give me a coat. No, one of the gentlemen's overcoats--that grey one will do. Do let me go round the square alone!""On August 14th, at about four o'clock in the afternoon, the expected storm burst; for twenty-five hours the invisible siege-guns poured their torrent of projectiles on the fort. Flares of fire and dense clouds of smoke belched through the crevices. As the enemy's batteries could not be located, their fire could not be answered. The artillerists of the garrison were then taken to the spacious chief gallery, which offered a safe refuge under its vault, about two and a half to three yards thick. Outside the sentries were watching. In the parts near the entrance it was unendurable; the heavy projectiles from the guns mounted in the town had nibbled away the outer wall, only a yard and a half thick. There were as yet no casualties among the garrison; calmly they waited for the infernal tempest to subside and the enemy to storm the fort, for they had sworn to repulse the assault.
THREE:The next and perhaps the most important point in favour of Epicureanism is its theory of pleasure as the end of action. Plato had left his idea of the good undefined; Aristotle had defined his in such a manner as to shut out the vast majority of mankind from its pursuit; the Stoics had revolted every instinct by altogether discarding pleasure as an end, and putting a purely formal and hollow perfection in its place. It must further be admitted that Epicurus, in tracing back justice to the two ideas of interest and contract, had hold of a true and fertile principle. Nevertheless, although ethics is his strongest ground, his usual ill-luck pursues him even here. It is where he is most original that he goes most astray. By reducing pleasure, as an end of action, to the mere removal of pain, he alters earlier systems of hedonism for the worse; and plays the game of pessimism by making it appear that, on the whole, death must be preferable to life, since it is what life can never bea state of absolute repose. And by making self-interest, in the sense of seeking nothing but ones own pleasure or the means to it, the only rule of action, he endangers the very foundations of society. At best, the selfish system, as Coleridge has beautifully observed, stands in a similar relation to the law of conscience or universal selfless reason, as the dial to the sun which indicates its path by intercepting its radiance.210 Nor is the indication so certain as Coleridge admitted. A time may come when116 self-sacrifice shall be unnecessary for the public welfare, but we are not within a measurable distance of it as yet.
THREE:Wrought out another change in human life,"Why should I deny it?" Leona said boldly. "My husband was murdered. He was slain by Dr. Gordon Bruce for the sake of his money."
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