have points of resemblance; something to the haste with which both the Professors often prepared overnight for the next morning's duties; but something, also, to strong similarities of genius. Both united a vivid imagination with a remarkable and very precocious faculty of analysis; both possessed great fertility of illustration and copiousness of diction. The rhetorical pomp, the very structure and march of the style, will, if we mistake not, constantly recall the lectures of the Edinburgh professor. These also, like those of Butler, were produced at a very early, though not so early an age, and published from the unrevised notes of the author.

Of the Lectures on the History of Ancient Philosophy, the most attractive will, without doubt, be the series on Plato: and here we entirely agree with Professor Thompson. When, some eight years ago, we lamented that there was so little in the English language adapted to give the mere English reader any just idea either of the wisdom or the genius of Plato,-of the value of those portions of his philosophy which the mass of educated men can appreciate, or the literary beauties which are discernible by every man of taste and feeling; when we lamented that stolid commentators should have indulged so disproportionately in σκιομαχία or νυκτομαχία on the obscurer mysteries of his system; that they should, in their learned dulness, so often have erred in their interpretations by taking his very metaphors literally, and turning his very irony into earnest, we little thought there was one in the sister island who was doing so much to wipe off this reproach from our literature. Had we known it, we should have expressed auguries, which, though his too early death would not have allowed them to be wholly fulfilled, would have been justified by what he had already accomplished. But here, as so often, we are sadly reminded of the Tu Marcellus.' In these fragments of the History of Ancient Philosophy,' interesting and beautiful as they are, we are still more strongly impressed with what the author was capable of, than with what he has achieved.

That Professor Butler has seized the general spirit of Plato's philosophy with great sagacity, and expressed it very vividly, will, we think, be conceded by every intelligent reader of both. Whether, in some cases, his enthusiasm has not done more than justice to Plato, and interpreted his tenets more definitely than his text will warrant, may admit of doubt; also whether,

* In one remarkable instance, as Professor Thompson has remarked, even Butler has been misled into a misconception of Plato's meaning, by interpreting his irony seriously. See vol. ii. p. 23.

them

under the same influences, he has not sometimes been more liberal than justice demanded, as in dealing with Plato's visionary physics in the Timæus ;' or too lenient and tender towards. acknowledged paradoxes, as in relation to the notion of the preexistence of the soul, and the dogma that all knowledge is but reminiscence. If required to give an example of interpretation more explicit than Plato's varied language, or even than Butler's apparently vacillating statements will perhaps justify (though we have no doubt that the Professor's formal view is substantially correct), we should instance his representation of the celebrated Platonic Ideas.' Howsoever understood, they enter deeply into the structure of the Platonic philosophy, and no end of controversy has been lavished on the philosopher's precise view of their nature; though such controversy does not affect the great truths of his philosophy, any more than Newton's theory, or no theory, as to what gravitation is, affects the conclusions of his Principia. Now what were these Ideas' as Plato conceived these Eternal Models? It may well perplex his commentators to say; for his language, at all times apt to be richly imaginative, will justify, if interpreted rigidly, very different conclusions. He believed them, as has been well said, 'corre'spondent to general notions and something more;' but what is that something more? Did he believe, as many commentators have asserted, and as many expressions would imply, that they were distinct entities, separate from any and from all minds? That he thought them anterior to, and independent of, the human mind, is evident; for he plainly avows that abstraction and generalisation are but the organs or instruments by which man rises to the knowledge of these eternal principles - by which he detects the absolute and immutable in the phenomenal and the transient - by which he disentangles the fugitive unity from the Protean forms of the perishable and material in which it is constantly concealing itself. This process of generalising is, as Plato expressly teaches us, the method, in his apprehension, by which the mind is trained to the perception of truths immutable and eternal; but those truths themselves arrived at in this way or any way-did he rank them independent of the Supreme as well as the human mind? The answer is, that there are many expressions which would imply that he did; and yet there are many others which would indicate that, in any grosser sense, he did not. Now Professor Butler seems, first, to say that he unquestionably did; and enters into an elaborate disquisition on the modes in which Plato regarded Ideas,' as distinct from Man, from the Sensible Universe, and from God; yet when he comes to give his exposition of the sense in which the Platonic Ideas

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have points of resemblance; something to the haste with which both the Professors often prepared overnight for the next morning's duties; but something, also, to strong similarities of genius. Both united a vivid imagination with a remarkable and very precocious faculty of analysis; both possessed great fertility of illustration and copiousness of diction. The rhetorical pomp, the very structure and march of the style, will, if we mistake not, constantly recall the lectures of the Edinburgh professor. These also, like those of Butler, were produced at a very early, though not so early an age, and published from the unrevised notes of the author.

Of the Lectures on the History of Ancient Philosophy, the most attractive will, without doubt, be the series on Plato: and here we entirely agree with Professor Thompson. When, some eight years ago, we lamented that there was so little in the English language adapted to give the mere English reader any just idea either of the wisdom or the genius of Plato,- of the value of those portions of his philosophy which the mass of educated men can appreciate, or the literary beauties which are discernible by every man of taste and feeling; when we lamented that stolid commentators should have indulged so disproportionately in σκιομαχία or νυκτομαχία on the obscurer mysteries of his system; that they should, in their learned dulness, so often have erred in their interpretations by taking his very metaphors literally, and turning his very irony into earnest, we little thought there was one in the sister island who was doing so much to wipe off this reproach from our literature. Had we known it, we should have expressed auguries, which, though his too early death would not have allowed them to be wholly fulfilled, would have been justified by what he had already accomplished. But here, as so often, we are sadly reminded of the Tu Marcellus.' In these fragments of the History of Ancient 'Philosophy,' interesting and beautiful as they are, we are still more strongly impressed with what the author was capable of, than with what he has achieved.

That Professor Butler has seized the general spirit of Plato's philosophy with great sagacity, and expressed it very vividly, will, we think, be conceded by every intelligent reader of both. Whether, in some cases, his enthusiasm has not done more than justice to Plato, and interpreted his tenets more definitely than his text will warrant, may admit of doubt; also whether,

In one remarkable instance, as Professor Thompson has remarked, even Butler has been misled into a misconception of Plato's meaning, by interpreting his irony seriously. See vol. ii. p. 23.

under the same influences, he has not sometimes been more liberal than justice demanded, as in dealing with Plato's visionary physics in the Timæus ;' or too lenient and tender towards acknowledged paradoxes, as in relation to the notion of the preexistence of the soul, and the dogma that all knowledge is but reminiscence. If required to give an example of interpretation more explicit than Plato's varied language, or even than Butler's apparently vacillating statements will perhaps justify (though we have no doubt that the Professor's formal view is substantially correct), we should instance his representation of the celebrated Platonic Ideas.' Howsoever understood, they enter deeply into the structure of the Platonic philosophy, and no end of controversy has been lavished on the philosopher's precise view of their nature; though such controversy does not affect the great truths of his philosophy, any more than Newton's theory, or no theory, as to what gravitation is, affects the conclusions of his Principia. Now what were these Ideas'. as Plato conceived them these Eternal Models? It may well perplex his commentators to say; for his language, at all times apt to be richly imaginative, will justify, if interpreted rigidly, very different conclusions. He believed them, as has been well said, 'corre'spondent to general notions — and something more;' but what is that something more? Did he believe, as many commentators have asserted, and as many expressions would imply, that they were distinct entities, separate from any and from all minds? That he thought them anterior to, and independent of, the human mind, is evident; for he plainly avows that abstraction and generalisation are but the organs or instruments by which man rises to the knowledge of these eternal principles - by which he detects the absolute and immutable in the phenomenal and the transient - by which he disentangles the fugitive unity from the Protean forms of the perishable and material in which it is constantly concealing itself. This process of generalising is, as Plato expressly teaches us, the method, in his apprehension, by which the mind is trained to the perception of truths immutable and eternal; but those truths themselves — arrived at in this way or any way-did he rank them independent of the Supreme as well as the human mind? The answer is, that there are many expressions which would imply that he did; and yet there are many others which would indicate that, in any grosser sense, he did not. Now Professor Butler seems, first, to say that he unquestionably did; and enters into an elaborate disquisition on the modes in which Plato regarded 'Ideas,' as distinct from Man, from the Sensible Universe, and from God; yet when he comes to give his exposition of the sense in which the Platonic Ideas

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are to be interpreted, it is seen that he distinctly excludes every grosser sense, and tacitly assumes his reconciliation with the paradoxical expressions to be correct. Then, they are no ' other than those eternal laws and reason of things, which even 'the most cursory examination cannot deny to be a necessary 'element in every metaphysical estimate of the universe.' This, we have little doubt, is the substantially correct view; but then it ought to be said, that if so, Plato's language is often highly reprehensible. The grosser, but frequently more natural sense, would represent these Ideas as having an existence out of the divine mind; it implies (as some of Plato's commentators have interpreted him) that the Creator, when he framed the universe in harmony with them, looked upon these independent and 'eternal Exemplars,' and wrought from them as a statuary from a model or a painter from a sketch. We have little doubt that Professor's Butler's explication of the sense in which Plato regarded Ideas' as real and independent existences is the correct one, and that if the philosopher had clearly expressed his meaning, free from all ambiguity and all poetry, it would have been seen to be so.

'You can now easily enter into the aim of the theory of Ideas. That man's soul is made to contain not merely a consistent scheme of its own notions, but a direct apprehension of real and eternal laws beyond it, is not too absurd to be maintained. That these real and eternal laws are things intelligible, and not things sensible, is not very extravagant either. That these laws, impressed upon creation. by its Creator, and apprehended by man, are something distinct equally from the Creator and from man; and that the whole mass of them may be fairly termed, the world of things purely intelligible, is surely allowable. Nay, further, that there are qualities in the Supreme and ultimate Cause of all, which are manifested in his creation, and not merely manifested, but, in a manner— - after being brought out of his superessential nature into the stage of being below him, but next to him,-are then, by the causative act of creation, deposited in things, differencing them one from the other, so that the things participate of them (μεTÉXOvσi), communicate with them (KOLVWrovo); this likewise seems to present no incredible account of the relation of the world to its Author. That the intelligence of man, excited to reflection by the impressions of these objects thus (though themselves transitory) participant of a divine quality, should rise to higher conceptions of the perfection thus faintly exhibited; and, inasmuch as these perfections are unquestionably real existences, and known to be such in the very act of contemplation,—that this should be regarded as a direct intellectual apperception of them, a union of the reason with the Ideas, in that sphere of being which is common to both,- this is certainly no preposterous notion in substance, and, by those who deeply study it, will perhaps be judged no