Article August 28, 1902 Issue

Plutarch and Modern Thought

with contributions from Geo. Macdonald

Plutarch, who was one of the most enlightened reporters of the thought of his time, was himself a good representative of the enlightened man of the world whose opinions represented that which everybody in his time was supposed to know. By many references he shows that there were, two thousand years ago, mathematicians and other philosophers who had advanced new views of the phenomena of the visible universe. It is very interesting to read his discussions of scientific matters, because we see the birth of modern science, we see how such theories as the attraction of gravitation, the movement of the earth on its axis and in its annual revolution, the ether which fills all space, and the idea that the moon is a body like our earth, impressed mathematicians who were getting a glimpse of the explanation which came later to Descartes, Sir Isaac Newton, Darwin, and Spencer.—The Christian Register.

It is a happy thing for us that this is really all we have to concern ourselves about,—what to do next. No man can do the second thing. He can do the first. If he omits it, the wheels of the social Juggernaut roll over him, and leave him more or less crushed behind. If he does it, he keeps in front, and finds room to do the next again; and so he is sure to arrive at something, for the onward march will carry him with it. There is no saying to what perfection of success a man may come, who begins with what he can do, and uses the means at his hand. He makes a vortex of actin, however slight, towards which all the means instantly begin to gravitate. Let a man but lay hold of something,—anything,—and he is in the high road to success, though it may be very long before he can walk comfortably in it. It is true the success may be measured out according to a standard very different from his.—Geo. Macdonald.

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