The Press.
London, England, 1858-02-06 00:00:00

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,
we 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mass of unpublished commentary which exists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