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128 NEW BOOKS. la reflexion sur soi, a-ufypoa-vvi] ". No justification is given for equating two ideas so distinct in Plato as vorja-is and (frpovrjcris, but M. Halevy probably means vorja-is. Thought has three necessary forms, Being, Motion, Rest, to which are added Identity and Difference, making the five pfyurra yevr} which we find in the Sophist. The next stage in the evolu- tion of things from vovs is number. In his account of the yevftris dpt^oG, M. HaleVy appears to us ill-advised when he interprets the creation of the soul in the Timieus as a symbolical account of the evolution or creation call it what you will of number. That Xenocrates should have taken this view was natural enough, for he explained Soul as a self-moving number, which Plato never did, so far as we know. Soul, as Plutarch observes (De animx procreations, 1013 c), was regarded by Plato as a (frvms CIVTOKIVTITOS, the fount and source of movement, whose essence was ordered by numerical ratios, from which however it is itself distinct. Nor can such an interpretation be maintained without doing violence to the language of the Tirnxus (35 A). Next in order of evolution come the mathematical relations, after which the sciences connected with Motion are discussed. Finally, the science of politics is reviewed in the light of regressive dialectic. The work is vigorously written, and will be found interesting by those who adhere to the allegorical method of interpreting Plato. To us it appears far abler than the majority of such works. M. HaleVy does not always, so we think, escape the besetting dangers of the allegorisers, looseness of interpretation alternating with over-subtlety where a point is to be gained. One striking instance will be found on p. 296, where fjujxavaa-dai is said to mean "produire une illusion par des precedes methodiques," and trw/m ffj.rj^avT)a-avro in Tim., 45 B is accordingly taken as indicating that "un corps n'est done, en derniere analyse, qu' une apparence produit d'une machination ou d'une illusion divine". Unhappily for this theory ^ v x v " fV"?X a "'7 ' aTO i g sa *d * n 34 c : are we then to call Soul a mere illusion too ? The fact is, so at least we think, that Plato will never be satisfactorily interpreted until we are content to explain each dialogue in the first instance by itself alone, and leave allegory alone till this has been successfully achieved. The scholarly interpretation of Plato's language is an indispensable preliminary to any sound theory of his philosophy ; and when this result is reached, we shall perhaps need allegory much less than now. . J. ADAM Essai sur I' Art contemporain. Par H. FIERENS-GEVAERT. Paris : Felix Alcan, 1897. Pp. x., 174. This essay, or rather these essays, dealing with various aesthetic subjects, are knit together by a moral intention increasingly insistent. The author dips into the psychology of artistic production and of critical interpreta- tion, and in ' L'Evolution de 1'Art 1 makes an interesting contribution to the history of medieval art. But his explicit object throughout is to arouse those of the younger generation who are casting about for an outlet to artistic proclivities, or who are already launched, to a sense of the moral sublimity of the mission of art, and to guide them in the arduous and baffl- ing task of self-knowledge and self-culture. In the chapter, for instance, on the rule de la Volonte dans la creation artistique, the treatment is moral throughout, the artist being exhorted to resist giving way to aboulie and the delusion that he can do no good work save in the minutes benie? when the fit is on him, to guard well against the temptations of sense, since every feeling is a volition in the germ, and to obey " the laws of the