Means for the critical examination of the initial stages in the movement of occidental philosophy have been rapidly accumulating in the last quarter of a century. We now have the fragments of the Pre-Socratics pretty thoroughly examined and stated according to the best canons of philological and historical criticism. The voluminous works of the Germans in this period, the various articles in the Archiv, Tannery's Science Hellène, and Burnet's Early Greek Philosophy have furnished us with thoroughgoing statements of the most important problems in this period of Greek thought. It is a pleasure to welcome another English volume, which is a valuable contribution to our materials on the subject. Fairbanks has brought together in the volume before us a careful collection of the extant fragments, which he has edited conservatively in the light of the best critical literature. Although the work done by Fairbanks is, in the main, philological, the results intimately concern the historian of philosophy. The materials are here furnished for the study at first hand of the genesis and development of Greek philosophical notions. Burnet's excellent and suggestive account of this period is supplemented by Fairbanks in several ways. In the first place, the latter provides us here with a Greek text of the fragments. Secondly, he gives us a full account of passages in Plato and Aristotle which relate to the Pre-Socratics, and also translations from the Doxographers. Thirdly, in an appendix, he gives a full and lucid survey of the various sources, with a criticism of their relative historical values. The volume includes the fragments of Thales, Anaximander, Anaximenes, Heraclitus, Xenophanes, Parmenides, Zeno, Melissus, the Pythagoreans, Empedocles, and Anaxagoras. No account is taken of the Atomists, presumably because of our lack of knowledge of Leucippus, and the fact that Democritus, because of his theory of knowledge, is to be reckoned as postsophistic. The translations are usually not so clear and philosophically skillful as those of Burnet, but they are generally more literal and exact. The date of Thales is set at 640 according to an inferior tradition, instead of 624 or 625. Burnet's name is usually mispelled. The value of Aristotle's testimony on the opinions of the Pre-Socratics is underestimated. The appendix gives an excellent summary of the Doxographic tradition, and states in outline the results of Diel's Doxographi Græci—a very useful outline for students who do not have time or disposition to employ this exhaustive and somewhat technical work.
Without attempting a closely articulated system, the writer of this book has set forth a general theory of society and morals, and has given expression to his views on certain social problems of the day. Society is explained as a natural development from the common interests of individuals in the struggle for existence. Justice is the condition of coöperation and the guarantee to each of an equal share in the products of associated efforts.
