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R. A. DUFF, Spinoza's Political and Ethical Philosophy. 399 In the scheme in 587 D the interpolated stages have no existence in Plato, and, therefore, need no conjectural interpretation. In view of the otherwise pointedness of the note here as to the reasonableness of the increase of ' the modulus of progression/ the declension upon ' stages in the gradual degeneration of the oligarch ' is somewhat disappointing. But for the rest we resist the temptation which so stimulating a book as Dr. Adam's presents to the reviewer to argue for diver- gent views. It remains to say something of his text. Dr. Adam published a text of the Republic so lately as 1897, and the present variants from that text are numerous. Either that text was con- structed on inadequate principles and Dr. Adam expressly affirms that his principle of textual editing has remained the same or he had not sufficiently summered and wintered what he then printed. That he displays an open mind, and that his present text is the more conservative of the two, are facts which perhaps may go down to the editor's credit, but such notes as ' I think that Plato wrote ' so and so, ' although I have not ventured to change the text ' (ad 453 D), and again, ' the insertion of KO.L TWO? after r&v TWO? appears to me to solve all the difficulties' (vol. i., p. 271), when Dr. Adam having printed that as his text of 1897 has withdrawn it from his text for the present edition, give strong reason to doubt whether Dr. Adam's temperament is one fitted for the responsibilities of the editing of texts. Of Dr. Adam's own conjectures that in 580 D is certain, that in 454 D almost so. One which he himself has not the courage to print in 439 A is seductive. That in 507 B is due to a mistaken view of the translation. Our editor's claim to have originated the reading yiyvwrKonewjv in 508 E involves a curious lapse of memory. He is to be congratulated on having, like Prof. Burnet, restored the ov8' av f)fi of 615 D. We could ill afford to lose what an Oxford undergraduate once described as ' the modified future of eschatological uncertainty ' ! HERBERT W. BLUNT. Spinoza's Political and Ethical Philosophy. By ROBERT A. DUFF. Glasgow : James Maclehose & Sons. 8vo, pp. xii., 516. THIS is to the present reviewer a puzzling book. I should have liked the criticism of it to fall into the hands of some one who could find Mr. Duff's point of view more congenial than I do, or be sure of having found it at all. There is no question about Mr. Duff's knowledge of his text ; he knows it very well. His ex- position of particular passages in Spinoza leaves little to be desired. Yet there is an indescribable air of paradox all through ; and the fundamental thesis is intensely paradoxical, unless all students of Spinoza and of political philosophy have been wrong together. It is thus stated in the preface : ' Spinoza had no interest in meta-