NEW BOOKS. 431 come of his passion for reform. Like his follower Plato, he considered the reformation of Athens to be possible only by reforming the rulers ; and hence his doctrine of Duty and Virtue " ist nicht eine solche fiir den Menschen tiberhaupt : sie ist unter dem Gesichtspunkte seiner Gesellschaftsreform entworfen und bezieht sich weseiitlich auf den Stand der Leitenden ". This proposition Dr. Doring seeks to establish by a detailed examination of the Socratic theory of the Virtues. The direction which in Socrates' opinion reform should take was towards aristocracy, in the etymological sense of the word. In this respect Socrates agreed with the tendency of all Greek political speculation, although he did not lose himself in mere Utopias like Plato. Finally, in part iii., it is shown that such a conception of Socrates' life and doctrine is strictly in harmony with the circumstances of his age, and supported to some slight extent by the testimony of the ancients themselves, as well as by the political speculations of his pupils, particularly of Plato in the older section of the Republic, and by Xenophon in his Cyropae-dia. Such is the view of Socrates presented by Dr. Doring. As a protest against a certain school of critics, who are unwilling to allow that Socrates was anything but ' the father of philosophy,' the work is of the greatest value. It gives us a picture of Socrates which, so far as it goes, is true. But is it the whole truth ? We doubt it. Let us grant that Socrates himself aimed at' reforming his country, by the creation of a school of statesmen who should rule for their country's good ; we have still to explain the impulse which he gave to philosophy in the person of Plato. The work before us gives an admirable account of the substance of Socrates' teach- ing ; but touches only lightly on his 'method. It was his method, as Aristotle observed long ago, which gave birth to a new era in philo- sophy, and no picture of Socrates can be complete without the presence of this feature. Now it is just the method of Socrates, and all that it involved imagination, enthusiasm, sympathy which we should a priori expect to have eluded the matter-of-fact Xenophon. The Cijropsedia is a melancholy proof that Xenophon was almost totally lacking in philosophical insight and imagination ; and it is unreasonable to suppose that he could have sounded the depths of so marvellous a nature as Plato has described for us in the Symposium. To us it seems that intellectual stimulus and moral enthusiasm are singularly lacking even in the Memorabilia; and without these qualities no one could have influenced the soul of Plato as Socrates did. Schleiermacher's formula, that the historical Socrates was x + the Socrates of the Memorabilia, still holds the field ; and the unknown quantity is still to be interpreted from the dialogues of Plato, especially, perhaps, from the Symposium and the Phfcdo. None the less should we be grateful to Dr. Doring for so scholarly and exhaustive an account of one of the two sides in the character of Socrates. J. ADAM. Psychologie. Von Dr. ALOIS HOFLEE. Wiess und Prag : F. Tempsky. Pp. 604. Dr. Hofler, whose Logic was published some years ago, and then attracted considerable attention, has now finished a text-book of psychology, which constitutes with the former a " Philosophische Propaedeutik," intended for the higher classes of Austrian middle schools. The greater part of books of this kind consist of little more than extracts from larger hand-books, imitating them in their divisions and proportions
