huntsman, must be no easy task. "How canst thou contend with horses," is the feeling of every breathless commentator panting afoot through the thickets of the Dialectics. The intricacies of the dialogue are endless, "a mighty maze," though we cannot add, "not without a plan." His dialogues are not as those state hunts in which the ground is measured, the beaters in livery, the dogs as well trained as the domestics, and the deer dies by courtesy, when the monarch canters up, with the grand huntsman a horselength behind him, to give the coup de grace. Plato sets out on a bonâ fide hunt after truth; the race is to the swift; the Sophists are not courtiers that fall back to let Socrates come in to the death. Sometimes the game escapes from the one, to fall into the hands of the other oftener still it escapes both alike. They run across each other; laugh at each other's falls; change sides and end the dialogue; often by affirming what each set out with denying. Their logic is about as consistent as that of Hudibras :-

Besides t'was known he could dispute, Confute, change hands, and still confute.

There is only one thing in the world like a dialogue of Plato-and that is a play of Shakespeare. A compari

The

son of the two will give the English reader some insight into a lecturer's difficulties with Plato as his text book. With our English poet as all the world is a stage so on the philosopher's stage is crowded all the world. Shakespeare knows no more of unities than nature-a drunken porter, and a Macbeth that murders sleep, shuffle each other off the same stage. voice of man is as the sound of many waters-the wail of woe and the ring of laughter blend together in the hum of great Babylon. With an ear for every sound, Shakespeare wrote of them as he heard them. With a mind as music itself, he knew a higher harmony than the laws of the drama could have taught him, and modulated discords as a master musician only can do. To understand Plato is to understand Shakspeare. None but these two could so nobly play the buffoon, or negligently act the noble. Shakespeare is no more a playwright than Plato a philosopher in the pedant

sense of the word-to the one all the world is a stage, to the other all the world an academy. The motto of the Globe theatre, "totus mundus agit histrionem," suited such an imperial fancy as Shakespeare's, which laid the whole world under contribution. The range of Plato's is no less extensive. It is even more wonderful in the philosopher than the poet; for that discursiveness which enables us to alight on truth in poetry leads us off the scent in philosophy. We often wonder how Plato can ever recover himself, and pick up the loose links of thought which have been thrown away in the pursuit of some digressive fancy.

All this deserves to be stated in justice to any expositor of Plato. It is only a diligent student of the Platonic dialogues who can do any justice to the difficulty of such a task as Mr. Butler has not only attempted, but to a great extent succeeded in.

We cannot better introduce our readers to the study of Plato than in the following noble passage from Mr. Butler's lectures:--

In

"We have traced the chief lineaments of those minor philosophies which engaged the Grecian world during the latter life, and immediately after the death of Socrates. reviewing them, marked as they are by strong characteristic differences, we have been, as it were, modulating through a diversity of keys in the human soul; but all these are only the prelude to the more solemn and profound harmony to follow. It is not without emotion that I arrive at that stage of our progress which brings me to the philosophy of Plato a philosophy which, whether regarded in itself, or with reference to its influences upon the history of reflective man, rises before us in all the dignity of the mightiest and and most permanent monument ever erected by unassisted human thought exercised upon the human destinies. It is true, that in the opinion of the multitude, this majestic structure can now be considered as little more than the ruin of ancient glory; the interest that still belongs to it is, in their mind, the interest that attends the decay of everything which bears the impress of former greatness, and that makes all for ever venerable which once was venerated. Even in this view the speculations of Plato would amply recompense the inquiry of every mind which has learned to find its Present in the Past; and which, seeing little in the world around it to engage or gratify, would gladly compose its favourite scenery of thought from the ideal excellences of a world that cannot return. But the claims of the Platonic phi

losophy far overpass this inferior ground. Its powerful influences in every age sufficiently demonstrate this. They prove that, whatever opinion we inay justly form regarding the details of its reasoning, and however we may be disposed to criticise their legitimacy, there is, in the body of the system itself, a something which finds its echo in the heart, and its reflexion in the reason, of universal man and they suggest that even its errors, it they exist, are, from their peculiar complexion and character, likely to be better worth investigation than the truths of narrower theories. We may refuse assent to the express decisions of the Master, we may often lament his wavering indecision of style, and his conclusions in which nothing seems concluded,- -we may regret also that Imagination should flush with her rich and changeful hues those very regions which it is the declared purpose of the philosopher to present in the ethereal transparency of pure Reason; and, lost in the bewildering labyrinth of beauty, we may sometimes sigh for the cold exactness of Plato's great pupil and rival; but in defiance of all our exceptions, objections, and perplexities, there is a spell in the page, and no man, worthy to read Plato, can read him, and not own himself in the presence of a mighty Interpreter of the human Soul."

A critic of Plato must be forgiven if some of the desultoriness of his author creeps over him. The difficulty of reducing speculations so wide and all-embracing within the limits of any system, has always met the student of Plato at the very threshold. "Shall we return to our subject," asks Socrates, in the Theatetus? "Not at all, Socrates," is the reply. You have justly said that we are not the slaves of our discussion, but our discussion of us." The course of argument flows on with Plato, but it is after the sentiment of Wordsworth :

The river glided at its own sweet will;—

and, once embarked on it, we must take it with all its windings if we follow its course at all.

The whole of Plato's dialogues have generally been classed under these three great divisions, Dialectics, Morals, Physics.

Dialectics is the investigation of the eternally and absolutely good, morals the imitation of it, physics the sensible result of it. According to Plato, science is of being; nescience or ignorance of non-being,-midway

between the two is opinion. Dialec tics, or the master-science, conducts us out of the world of phenomena and opinions, into one of substance and truth.

Absolute goodness, which contained the harmony of the Pythagorean within the limits of the Elean school, together with an ethical and cosmological element which Plato had the merit of adding to the colder ontological abstraction of earlier philosophies, stood in the place of the relative personal God of revelation to us. As theology is the master-science with us, so ontology was to Plato; and as our ethics or physics are sound or not, according as they stand related to a true, that is, a Christian theism, so with Plato these same were dependant branches of ontology. Taking Descartes's illustration of a tree, ontology was the root, ethics the trunk, and physics the branches. Dialectics, or the root-science, became thus first in importance, ethics the next, and physics the last and least.

It is curious, and worth remarking, that the order of treatment of the three groups of sciences, ontological, or its modern equivalent, theological, ethical, and physical, is exactly reversed in modern times.

In Socrates' time, theology was corrupted with physics; as in Bacon's time, physics was corrupted by theology. Socrates first classed the sciences in the order of importance ontology, or the science of essence, first; next, ethics; last, physics. Considered by itself, this is the natural and true order of knowledge. God known first as the absolute, and man next, in twofold revelation of himself

The starry heaven, and the soul of man.' But though ontology, or pure theology, in importance is first, in practical life it is the last of the three. With reference to the study of physics, it is a "virgin barren, and dedicated to God." The science of final causes had thus intruded into the department of physics in the time of Bacon, as phy sics in the time of Socrates had threatened to thrust out ontology. The deductive method was thus set on foot by Socrates as a check against Atheism; and the inductive by Bacon as a check against superstition

Each in his day and generation was a reformer. In ontology Socrates erected an altar to the unknown God, and thus kept alive the religious principle till the day when a wiser than Socrates stood on Mars' Hill to declare, "whom ye ignorantly worship, him I declare unto you," while Bacon, assuming the truth of theology in the revelation of a personal God, set the mind freerom logical questions about final causes-the old ontology, whose use was past-to study nature as it is, and from the wisdom of eternal laws, and the yet greater wisdom of their particular collocations, to build up a cumulative argument for design, to which even revealed theology is not ashamed acknowledge its obligations.

to

The beautiful harmony between Socrates' work in the world, and Bacon's, the founders of the deductive and inductive methods respectively, is becoming better understood every day. There are a few perverse doctrinaires in both extremes-the positive school on the side of Bacon, the intuitionalists on the side of Plato, who would repudiate the other; but good in the end has come out of the long controversy, and " our thoughts are widening with the circle of the sun," until good men have come to admit that deductive truth now belongs to revelation, and inductive to science; and that in the order of absolute importance, the method of Plato must be followed, from theology to ethics, and from ethics to physics; but that in the order of practical life and daily use, the order of Bacon, from physics to ethics, and from ethics to theology, the last and sacred retreat of thought must be preserved.

Dialectics, according to Plato, being the master-science, and ethics and physics its two derived branches, it is easily seen that whatever faults there are in Plato's ethical or physical representations take their rise in an error in his dialectics. That error we believe to be the identification of knowledge and being. The definition of being by science is a definition of a whole by its part, or a substance by one of its attributes-and, this error once admitted, flows down through all the branches of his philosophy. We cannot too strongly protest against this vain presumptuous attempt to

transcend the sources of our knowledge, and define being by one of its modes.

The institutes of metaphysics by Professor Ferrier is one of the latest and boldest attempts of ontology. That Mr. Ferrier's theory of knowing and being has failed, we do not pause here to state-it is enough to remark that he 'errs with Plato,' and is content to err in such good company. To us who think that ontology had its place in ancient speculation, answering to theology in modern, such an excuse seems invalid; for Plato, we verily believe, would have abandoned ontology and the philosophy of the absolute, had a way been opened up to him to believe in what he could not know. Rationalism had some excuse in days of polytheism; now it has none. The true gnostic now is he who adores One who, as the absolute, he can never know, and believes in a Divine Person who, as unconditioned, he cannot understand.

It would have been interesting had the nature of Mr. Butler's argument allowed him to trace every error of the Platonic physics and ethics to this πρωτον ψευδος of ontology. It led him, for instance, to contradict himself so far as to admit that, since science and being are one, virtue as a part of being is also a science, and therefore may be taught an admission which the Sophists he opposed had turned to very good account. Professor Ferrier's theory of knowing and being may thus be of use to the student of Plato, as exhibiting in full-blow the one error to which may be traced as in the bud every other aberration of Platonism.

It has been well said that we can never survey a science from its own level-we must ascend above it to take it in, in all its details. The field of Platonism is thus far too wide to be surveyed by simple mensuration. Measuring-chain in hand, Professor Butler has patiently and exactly taken the area of several distinct fields of thought. Thus his survey of the physics of Plato, as contained in the Timæus, is perhaps the fullest and exactest account of the dialogue we possess; but our space would not permit us to follow him through one of these measured fields of philoso

phy; and therefore we have chosen a height from whence to look down on the whole. Dialectics, ethics, physics, all spring out of the attempt to deduce truth logically from the theory of the identity of knowing and being. In so far as knowledge is co-extensive with being, Plato is always right; when being transcends knowledge, Plato, with all ontologists, is always wrong. The strength of Plato is when, Antus-like, he touches earth; his weakness is, when he attempts to soar above the conditioned; when

ye cannot see

The stirring of his wings, and yet he soars.

Mr.

We have only one complaint to make of Mr. Butler, that he has not taken his wings, and criticised Plato from the height as well as from the plain. We miss that decision of view which comprehends Plato as well as apprehends him, from the eminence of that higher logic of which Sir W. Hamilton is the great modern master. Butler's criticism of Plato is more genial than severe and discriminating. He follows him on his own level as a truth-seeker, rather than looks down as one that has found it in an established school of philosophy. As the disciple is not above his master, Butler as a Platonist

does not take the bearings of his master's philosophy from above, but from his side. Wanting this higher criticism, he has left us nothing to desire as an English interpreter of Plato. To the student his book indeed may be safely offered as a manual to Plato. The series on Aristotle was left untinished. Aristotle was too great an encyclopædist himself to admit of such fragmentary treatment. In a future edition, should the publishers find a demand for it, we would suggest the issue of the series of lectures on Plato, separate from the rest; we could part without regret with the introductory series. Some of the first lectures on early Greek and Indian philosophy are not much better than those found in the ordinary histories of philosophy and we expect something better than comparative excellence from the author of 'the Letters on Development.' Not so with the series beginning with Socrates, and carrying us through the Platonic philosophy; it deserves a high place in the literature of the subject; and will no doubt keep it, whether linked with an introductory series which may be allowed to drop off, or, as we desire, separated from it as an original and distinct survey of the life and opinions of Plato.

"British Legation, Naples. "My dear Harcourt,

"It would seem that a letter of mine to you must have miscarried, a not unfrequent occurrence when entrusted to our Foreign Office for transmission. Should it ever reach you, you will perceive how unjustly you have charged me with neglecting your wishes. I have ordered the Sicilian wine for your friend. I have obtained the Royal leave for you to shoot in Calabria; and, I assure you, it is rather a rare incident in my life to have forgotten nothing required of me! Perhaps you, who know me well, will do me this justice, and be the more grateful for my present promptitude.

"It was quite a mistake sending me here; for anything there is to be done, Spencer or Lonsdale would perfectly suffice. I ought to have gone to Vienna; and so they know at home-but it's the old game played over again. Important questions! why, my dear friend, there is not a matter between this country and our own that rises above the capacity of a colonel of dragoons. Meanwhile, really great events are preparing in the East of Europe-not that I am going to inflict them upon you, nor ask you to listen to speculations which even they in authority turn a deaf ear to.

"It is very kind of you to think of my health. I am still a sufferer, the old pains rather aggravated than relieved by this climate. You are aware that, though warm, the weather here has some exciting property, some excess or other of a peculiar gas in the atmosphere, prejudicial to certain temperaments. I feel it greatly, and though the season is midsummer, I am obliged to dress entirely in a light costume of buckskin, and take Marsalla baths, which refresh me, at least, for the while. I have also taken to smoke the leaves of the nux vomica steeped in arrack, and think it agrees with me. The king has most kindly placed a little villa at Ischia at my disposal; but I do not VOL. XLVII.-NO. CCLXXXII.

mean to avail myself of the politeness. The Duke of San Giustino has also offered me his palace at Baia, but I don't fancy leaving this just now, where there is a doctor, a certain Tommasso Buffeloni, who really seems to have hit off my case. He calls it arterial athriticis, a kind of inflammatory action of one coat of the arterial system; his notion is highly ingenious, and wonderfully borne out by the symptoms. I wish you would ask Brodie, or any of our best men, whether they have met with this affection? what class it affects, and what course it usually takes? My Italian doctor implies, that it is the passing malady of men highly excitable, and largely endowed with mental gifts. I think I can recognise the accuracy of this hypothesis. It is only nature makes the blunder of giving the sharpest swords the weakest scabbards-what a pity the weapon cannot be worn naked!

"You ask me if I like this place. I do, perhaps, as well as I should like anywhere. There is a wonderful sameness over the world just now, preluding, I have very little doubt, some great outburst of nationality for all the countries of Europe. Just as periods of Puritanism succeed intervals of gross licentiousness.

Society here is, therefore, as you see it in London or Paris; well-bred people, like gold, are current every where. There is really little peculiar to observe. I don't perceive that there is more levity than elsewhere. The difference is, perhaps, that there is less shame about it since it is under the protection of the Church.

"I

I go out very little: my notion is that the Diplomatist, like the ancient Augur, must not suffer himself to be vulgarized by contact. He can only lose, not gain, by that mixed intercourse with the world. I have a few who come when I want them, and go in like manner. They tell me what is going on far better and more truthfully than paid employés, and they cannot trace my intentions through my enquiries, and hasten off

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