CHAPTER VIII.
LATER PLATONISM.
Speusippus, Plato's nephew, succeeded his uncle at the head of the Academy; and both he and those who succeeded him appear to have taken a few texts and phrases from their great master's writings, and on them to have built up ethical systems of their own; while others, like Hermodorus, traded on those "unwritten doctrines," said to have been divulged only to a favoured few. But all that time has brought down to us of the later Academy is some brief and fragmentary writings, and some untrustworthy traditions; and, for the most part, the memorial of these philosophers has perished with them.
Even in Plato's own day, divisions had sprung up among his followers; and one of his most promising pupils, who for twenty years had attended lectures in the Academy, founded that school which has ever since divided with his own the world of thought. "Every man is born an Aristotelian or a Platonist:" their principles are mutually repugnant, and there is no common ground between the two; and if Aristotle himself could not understand his master's point of view, there is still less chance of a modern Aristotelian
