Page:Philosophical Review Volume 1.djvu/127

This page has been proofread, but needs to be validated.
No. 1.]
REVIEWS OF BOOKS.
111

face of which the statement that the very Organon is "little more than an abstract," etc., is rather strong.

In speaking of the Platonic classification of the faculties of the soul, the author says that to Desire, Passion, and Reason the virtues Temperance, Courage, and Wisdom correspond. But Plato's σωφροσύνη is not referable, like ἀνδρεία, to a single faculty, but belongs to both the ἐπιθυμητικόν and θυμοειδές, as well as indirectly to λογιστικόν (Cf. Plat. Rep., 429 seq. and 443 C-E). The faculties and virtues can only in a loose way be called parallel.

The paragraph (p. 172) on the Academy belongs properly to the last chapter on Plato, though through Speusippos and Xenokrates as academical scholarchs the paragraph is brought into a sort of connection with Aristotle. A more considerable defect in this chapter is the seeming credence given to Strabo's and Plutarch's account of the loss of the writings of Aristotle. The cellar-of-Skepsis episode is referred to by the author as actually accounting for the eclipse of Aristotle during the period from Theophrastos to Andronikos of Rhodes, though no one supposes nowadays that the Skepsis copy was the only transcript of the Aristotelian writings in existence during these two hundred years. This, however, is the impression that page 176 leaves on the reader.

The work is, in the main, a good and reliable handbook to this important period in the history of philosophy, although it would be improved, in our estimation, by the addition of a short chapter on Neoplatonism.

Wm. A. Hammond.