custom and divine law, and demands absolute obedience to them. F. finds Sophokles' ideal man truthful and sincere. As an instance he cites Neoptolemos. The wily plans of Odysseus, on the contrary, fail; the stealth of Aias is punished by madness, and Herakles' treachery in slaying an enemy results in his death. Further, author finds devotion to the state, as a virtue, exemplified in Œdipus; he deduces also from the same character that reverence for the gods was an essential feature in the Greek ideal. He (F.) believes these ethical ideas to be the product of the age in which Sophokles lived, though he was in advance of the actual ideals of the time. The Sophoklean conception of virtue and duty are characteristic of Greece in general from the fact that they are aesthetic rather than ethical. The beautiful and the proportionate in conduct awaken enthusiasm; a grand fault is better than a weak virtue, and conscience is, with Sophokles, a sense of conformity to an aesthetic ideal. This aesthetic ideal, F. goes on to say, is embodied for the Greek in the eternal relation of things, in natural law in the moral world.
This is a study of the life and philosophy of Sir William Temple, born in 1553, entered King's College in 1573, where Digby was his tutor. He studied the Aristotelian logic at first with enthusiasm, but soon became an opponent. Afterwards he became secretary to Sir Philip Sydney, and later to the Earl of Essex. On the trial of the latter, he was accused of having also had a share in the plot against the queen, and compelled to go into banishment for some time. After his return he was made president of Trinity College, Dublin, and retained this position until his death in 1626. His character was unblemished, and though he was a fierce opponent yet he fought with arguments, and not by means of personalities and reproaches. His writings are nearly all polemics against Aristotle and the School-men. No one, not even Bacon, has more vigorously protested against false authority. He defended Ramus against the attacks of Digby and others; but both he and Ramus, while believing that they had freed themselves from authority, adopted the scholastic physics, psychology, and metaphysics. In religion, he maintained the most orthodox position, acknowledging the Scriptures as the supreme test of authority. He was one of the first in England who ventured to enter the lists against Aristotle and the Scholastics, and thus contributed his share towards breaking the chains which held English thought in bondage. Long intercourse with Temple must have strengthened that opposition to Scholasticism which shows itself so strongly in Bacon's
