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TIIE PRESS, FEBRUARY 6,1858. chief good, that it is Ti),Eiov and etV ' Teiptict and in capable of improvement or addition. (3) That man has an i F yov, or proper function; that man's Ai El4l perfects this, and that his well-being is inseparable from it. (dl The psychology of Plato, as a basis for moral distinctions. (5) The practical conclusion of Ethics, that philosophy is the highest good and the greatest happiness, being an approach to the nature of the Divine Being. DO The doctrine of Mic 47%, which is only a modification of Plato's MET;; , iTi;. (7) The doctrine of Ty6rsTis, which is an adaptation, with alterations, of a Socraticu- Platonic view. (ti) The theory of pleasure, its various kinds, and the transcendency of mental pleasures. (9) The theory of friendship, which seems based on the ques tions started and not answered in the Lysis of Plato. (10) Many a conception, of which mere scattered hints are to be found in Plato, appear here worked out definitely. To this we may add, that the very metaphors in the Ethics of Aristotle seem, for the most part, taken from Plato. So great an influence had the one philosopher produced upon the mind and writings of the other, in spite of their wide dissimilarities of nature and tendency. The whole of this essay is very ably executed. It is at once profound and transparent. But as we have only space for one more extract, wo must choose one of a more popular and intelligible kind, such as the following com parison of the two philosophers as men:— If we compare Plato and Aristotle as to the tone in which they write, it will appear that Aristotle is on the one hand more human than Plato; this he shows in his respect for the opinions of the multitude. He will not atlirm that the dead have no connection with this life, because it would be " a hard doctrine and going against opinions too much " xitsv Tai . c Si.fecic Ivan-joy. Ea. T. xi. 1). He is totally opposed to anything unnatural in life or institutions. And he recognises with a sort of enthusiasm the worth of moral virtue, without the inces sant demand which Plato made, that this should be accompanied by philosophy. On the other hand, Aristotle is less delicate and reverent than Plato in his mode of speaking of human happiness, especially as attained by the philosopher. In Plato there seems often, if not always, present, a sense of the weakness of the individual as contrasted with the eternal and the divine. If Plato requires philosophy to make morality, he also always in fuses morality into philosophy; the philosopher in his pictures does not triumph over the world, but rather is glad to seize on "some tradition like a stray plank," to prevent his being lost; he feels that his philosophy on earth is but " knowing in part." Aristotle, on the contrary, rather represents the strength than the weakness of human nature. And in his picture of the happiness of philosophy we cannot but feel that there is overmuch elation, and something that requires toning dawn. In the manner of the writing it is obvious that we miss the art, the grace, the rich and delicate imagination of Plato. Above al', we miss the subtle humour which plays round all the moral phenomena. Aristotle does not show any trace of arch. ness. There are sayings in the Ethics which might cause a smile, but they are apparently given unconsciously, in illustration of the point in question. In Eth. x. v. 8, to show that the different creatures have each their different proper pleasures, Aristotle quotes from Heraclitus the saying that "An ass likes hay better than gold," without any sense of anything ludicrous in the illustration. The same thing occurs in one of the Eudemian books (vit. vi. 2), where it is mentioned to illustrate the hereditariness of hot temper, that " A father being kicked out by his son, begged him to stop at the door, for he said he had kicked his father as far as that." This is mentioned with perfect gravity among a list of arguments. Aristotle's rich and manifold knowledge of human nature exhibits itself in his Ethics. It might be doubted whether Plato would have written the masterly analytic account of the various virtues in Books 111. and IV. These are not living dra matic portraits such as Plato would have made—there is nothing personal or dramatic about them ; but they are a wonderful catalogue and analysis of very subtle charac teristics. Tue italics are our own. The passage so dis tinguished is a memorable one. We believe that students who have read Plato often, whether they comprehend his metaphysics or not, come at last to regard him with a degree of personal affection which can never be enter tained for his successor. The reason is that assigned in the text. Plato, with all his spe culations, is truly human ; Aristotle, with all his practicality, is merely a name. The fourth essay deals with Aristotle's " Forms of Thought." Here Sir Alexander takes up the " four causes," the " end in it self," the notion contained in ;v4ystrs, the doctrine of " the mean," and other topics familiar to students of the Ethics. His ex position of the last-mentioned is, as we have before remarked, singularly lucid, or, if we may use amore expressive phrase, well cut. We strongly recommend the twelve pages in which it is contained to the attention of Aris• totelic neophytes. The dissertation on tvii.ries is also excellent, though we doubt if Sir Alex ander is warranted in the following : The word "energy," which comes more directly from iyi,:ytia, has ceased to convey the philosophical meaning of its original, being restricted to the notion of force and vigour. The employment of the term " energy," as a translation of ;viiyE let, has been a material hindrance to the proper understanding of Aristotle. This is especially 139 the case with regard to the Ethics, where there is an sp. pearance of plausibility, though an utterly fallacious one, in such a translation. We mean, of course, that all teachers of Aris totle are aware of this, and that the caution in the text is superfluous. We have observed in other passages some tendency to overrate the ignorance or indiffe rence of contemporaries. In his essay on modern ethical systems, we are most need lessly warned against reading Aristotle.'" as if " it were a modern treatise;' or comparing him with Bishop Butler without "having first " recognised the essential difference in their " points of view." As a reason for this admo nition, the discovery that the idea. of " duty ' ' has been imported into modern ethics is some what ostentatiously paraded. To criticise Sir Alexander's observations upon Paley and Butler would lead us out of our way. He is unfair to the latter for the same reason that makes so many modern wri ters unfair to him. They will insist upon dragging him out of the limits which he prescribed to himself. They choose to forget that he only chose a part and not the whole of moral philosophy. He never aspired to found a school, and it is eminently uncandid to judge him as if he had. From the fund Of Aristotelian learning dis played in these pages, we are justified in form ing sanguine expectations of the volume to come ; for not even if we admit that Aristotle " stands apart from ourselves," does that de tract aught from his value to the great mass of students. Aristotle, we must remember, pre sents himself under two aspects. His place in philosophy is one thing, his place in educa tion another. Regarded from the first point of view, his theory is more important than his method ; from the second, his method is more important than his theory. We know of no modern writer, nor does Sir Alexander mention any, by a study of whom the same habit of mind can he formed as by a study of Aristotle. the certainty that every word, if not always used in the same sense, is always used in a technical sense, and the consciousness that the meaning of a passage will probably elude us unless we have carefully weighed every one of its component parts, an invaluable men tal discipline. Other writer?, classical or not, can supply us with long chains of argumenV— in this respect Plato is mope serviceable than A ristotle---but the latter demands an unbroken mental vigilance, and a perpetual apprehension of error, which afford the best antidote to a habit of superficial study with which we are acquainted. A Letter to R. D. Mangles, Esq., MP., Chair man of the East India Company, in Defence of the Liberty of the Press in India. By John Connon, Proprietor, late Editor, of the Bombay Gazette, late Secretary of the Bom bay Chamber of Commerce, Izc. London : Algar and Street. THE above is the title of a very able pamphlet, intended to illustrate and enforce a petition to the House of Commons, 'printed in extenso at the end of it, and which winds up with the following sentence, in which all who know India will agree : That it is your petitioners' firm persuasion that the various authorities and agencies for the Government of India have nothing to fear in the discharge of their duty from a free press, but something to learn and much to be the better fur, as has been acknowledged by some of the highest, and many other of those authorities themselves. This petition the author purposes present ing during the present session. He does not say by whose hands, hut we have no dtoubt that, in a cause so noble, there will be no lack of members ready to undertake the duty and to support the prayer. It is to be hoped for the honour of England that, except the mere Ministerial hacks, there will be found no one so degraded as to sanction a code for our own press in India, far more stringent than that which is so constantly made the theme of vituperation by the Times and its correspon dent in France. Indeed, the claim to freedom of discussion in India and in England rests on precisely the same foundation; and, therefore, if it be right to gag the press in India, it must be equally right to gag it in England too. It is often quite as inconvenient to the rous eminent men both in Germany and Eng land. He has, however, omitted from his list of authorities the well-known essays of Tren delenburg, which, though based to a great extent on the work of Professor Brandis, which is included in Sir Alexander's list, contain more brief and lucid, if not original, explana tions of certain interesting doctrines than we had ever before met with till we encountered them in the present volume. Among others, w e should mention the reconciliation of Aris totle's doctrine of the mean with the Platonic Wri, which may be found in Trendelenburg, though our present author has certainly im proved upon the passage, and made the expla nation fuller and clearer. Sir Alexander is also, perhaps unconsciously, indebted to that mass of unpublished commentary which exists in the note-books of Oxford " coaches." He mentions, indeed, the lectures of Professor Jowett on the history of philosophy, but there are other points—such, for instance, as his reply on behalf of Plato to the famous fourth chapter—on which we can assure him he has been anticipated. The /opening essay is devoted to what may be termed the literary history of the Nicoma clean Ethics; and the results of it are as follow—first, That in the Nicomachean Ethics we have on the whole the work of Aristotle himself; in the Eudeinians a work by Eudemus of Rhodes, based on the former; in the Magna Moralia a résumé of both these preceding works, compiled by some later Peripatetic. Second, that of the ten books of the Ethics only the first and last were thoroughly finished by Aristotle ; that the fifth, sixth, and seventh are wholly composed by Eudemus, but without any important departure from Aristotle's doc trine ; and that the remainder were put toge ther by Nicomachus, when he determined to give a complete treatise to the world, from the rough notes of the philosopher. For this theory Sir Alexander is indebted to Spengel. The only portion of the prne•Platonic period in which our readers are likely to be interested is that which saw the rise and progress of the Sophists. Sir Alexander has not laid the same powerful grasp on this division of his subject as he has on the more abstract parts. He has evolved no distinct conclusion from the authorities cited, and, as might be expected in the absence of any leading idea, he is occa sionally confused. For instance, he tells us in one place that the Sophists were "only too orthodox "—in another, that Aristophanes, in ridiculing them, was the exponent of Conser vative feeling. We do not mean to deny that these two statements could be reconciled ; but then it should not be left to the reader to do so. Evidently on this head the author's views are undigested. His notions have not had time to shake themselves into their proper places. Elsewhere (p. 109), when Sir Alex ander asserts that the word sophistic " by no "means implied immoral tenets," he places himself in antagonism to the view very ably put forward in Mr. Sellar's essay on Thucy khdes. That gentleman considers that many of the speeches embodied •by the historian in his work are fair samples of the spirit generated by the Sophists—that this led to " the assertion of principles at variance with " morality "; and ho quotes the speech of Alcibiades before the Syracusan expedition as a case in point. To take the mildest view of their profession, we may say that the Sophists invented a weapon which it was very hazar dous to intrust to any but the most honest men, while at the same time it had a tendency towards increasing the number of the dis honest ones. We are glad, at all events, that Sir Alexander draws a broad line between his own and Mr. Grote's conception of the Sophists; and his essay, if less satisfactory than some, is still valuable from the careful collation of passages bearing on the question. and the clearness with which the history of the word itself is traced. To illustrate the useful character of these essays we shall select the following extract from the essay entitled " Aristotle's debt to Plato " In order to see at one glance how great was the debt of Aristotle to Plato, let us place together and briefly indicate those parts of the moral system of Aristotle which were inherited from his master. These were, (1) His concep tion of the science as a whole, that politics was the science of human happiness. (2) His conpeption of the practical f 1 1