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ALFRED w. BENN, The Philosophy of Greece, etc. 41 1 as paradoxical when Mr. Benn talks about " such a nest of bigotry as Athena ". And the objection presents itself, if philosophers, as Mr. Benn says, were everywhere else in Greece freer than at Athens, why were they all eager to go there and gain hearers or become founders of schools? At the time when mediaeval was giving way to modern philosophy, we do not observe a rush of original thinkers from all parts of Europe to Madrid, though Spain was then politically predominant. If Mr. Benn does not follow Grote in his general vindication of the Athenian democracy, he follows him in his defence of the Sophists. To the principal Sophists he assigns a high place as original thinkers, and more historical influence than is usually allowed. He divides them into the two classes of " humanists " and " physiocrats ". In the former class he places Protagoras and Gorgias ; in the latter, Hippias and Prodicus. The Stoic rule of "following nature " he would trace partly to those among the Sophists who set up " natural law " as a standard. Here, however, he recognises the much greater influence of Heraclitus. The contention of the sceptical Academy, that probable rules of human conduct are attainable without a settled physics or meta- physics, he finds to be derived through Plato from " the great humanist Sophists ". Epicureanism, he thinks, " can only be rightly estimated as a halting compromise between ftie opposing tendencies inherited from Protagoras and Hippias ". To go back to the beginning. Mr. Benn finds that .the charac- teristics of the Hellenic or, more exactly, of the Ionic spirit, were expressed in a general view of the world marked by the three principles of circumscription or limitation, antithesis, and mediation. These he traces through the early philosophical ex- planations of the universe. Before the stage of philosophising was reached, the general view was implicit in the ideal of " Sophrosyne," or " self-knowledge and self-control," which already ruled the life and art of the lonians. Both the aesthetic and practical ideal and the speculative thought were aristocratic products. The philosophic movement indeed was aided by the beginnings of popular government ; but it was less aided by the religious revival essentially a democratic movement which followed. The next phase of the transitional period, viz., the Ionian emigration to Italy, due to the pressure of Asiatic conquest, brought philosophy into new conditions. The special character- istics of the " Italic " series of thinkers are here traced in an interesting way to geographical circumstance. The " mediating " cause to use one of Mr. Benn's own expressions is the increased use which navigators and colonists found for mathematical science. This reacted on the philosophy of the Italiote lonians, giving it a bias towards some immutable principle, as opposed to a principle of change. The explanation from race as against circumstance would of course be to suppose a reaction from the Dorian spirit with its tenser " harmony," but Mr. Benn is inclined to depreciate