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1、The Project Gutenberg EBook of Philosophy 4, by Owen WisterThis eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with almost no restrictionswhatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the ProjectGutenberg License included with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg

2、.orgTitle: Philosophy 4A Story of Harvard UniversityAuthor: Owen WisterPosting Date: August 2, 2008 | EBook #862 Release Date: March, 1997 Last Updated:October 8, 2016Language: EnglishCharacter set encoding: UTF-8* START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK PHILOSOPHY 4 *Produced by Daniel P. B. SmithPHI

3、LOSOPHY 4A STORY OF HARVARD UNIVERSITYBy Owen WisterTwo frowning boys sat in their tennis flannels beneath the glare of lamp and gas. Theirleather belts were loosened, their soft pink shirts unbuttoned at the collar. They werelistening with gloomy voracity to the instruction of a third. They sat at

4、a table bared ofits customary sporting ornaments, and from time to time they questioned, sucked theirpencils, and scrawled vigorous, laconic notes. Their necks and faces shone with thebloom of out-of-doors. Studious concentration was evidently a painful novelty to theirfeatures. Drops of perspiratio

5、n came one by one from their matted hair, and their handsdampened the paper upon which they wrote. The windows stood open wide to the Maydarkness, but nothing came in save heat and insects; for spring, being behind time, wasmaking up with a sultry burst at the end, as a delayed train makes the last

6、few mileshigh above schedule speed. Thus it has been since eight oclock， Eleven was daintilystriking now. Its diminutive sonority might have belonged to some church-bell fardistant across the Cambridge silence; but it was on a shelf in the room,-a timepiece ofGallic design, representing Mephistophel

7、es, who caressed the world in his lap. And asthe little strokes boomed, eight-nine-ten-eleven, the voice of the instructor steadilycontinued thus:-“By starting from the Absolute Intelligence, the chief cravings of the reason, after unityand spirituality, receive due satisfaction. Something transcend

8、ing the Objective becomespossible. In the Cogito the relation of subject and object is implied as the primarycondition of all knowledge. Now, Plato never-“Skip Plato/5 interrupted one of the boys. You gave us his points yesterday.”“Yep J assented the other, rattling through the back pages of his not

9、es. uGot Plato downcold somewhere,oh, here. He never caught on to the subjective, any more than theother Greek bucks. Go on to the next chappie.”“If you gentlemen have mastered the-the Grreek bucks,“ observed the instructor, withsleek intonation, “we-“YepJ said the second tennis boy, running a rapid

10、 judicial eye over his back notes,“youve put us on to their curves enough. Go on.”The instructor turned a few pages forward in the thick book of his own neat type-writtennotes and then resumed,-“The self-knowledge of matter in motion.”“Skip it J put in the first tennis boy.“Wc went to those lectures

11、 ourselves/ explained the second, whirling through anotherdishevelled notebook. Oh, yes. Hobbes and his gang. There is only one substance,matter, but it doesnt strictly exist. Bodies exist. Weve got Hobbes. Go on.”The instructor went forward a few pages more in his exhaustive volume. He hadattended

12、all the lectures but three throughout the year, taking them down in short-hand.Laryngitis had kept him from those three, to which however, he had sent a stenographicfriend so that the chain was unbroken. He now took up the next philosopher on the list;but his smooth discourse was, after a short whil

13、e, rudely shaken. It was the secondtennis boy questioning severely the doctrines imparted.“So he says color is all your eye, and shape isnt? and substance isnt?”“Do you mean he claims,“ said the first boy, equally resentful, “that if we were allextinguished the world would still be here, only thcrcM

14、 be no difference between blueand pink, for instance?”“The reason is clear； responded the tutor, blandly. He adjusted his eyeglasses, placedtheir elastic cord behind his ear, and referred to his notes. It is human sight thatdistinguishes between colors. If human sight be eliminated from the universe

15、, nothingremains to make the distinction, and consequently there will be none. Thus also is itwith sounds. If the universe contains no ear to hear the sound, the sound has noexistence.”Why? said both the tennis boys at once.The tutor smiled. Is it not clear,“ said he, “that there can be no sound if

16、it is not heard!”“No, they both returned, not in the least clear.”“Its clear enough what hes driving at of course/ pursued the first boy. Until thewaves of sound or light or what not hit us through our senses, our brains dontexperience the sensations of sound or light or what not, and so, of course, we cantknow about the