Page:Mind (New Series) Volume 9.djvu/569

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NODET, Ex-Interne desHopitaux <!,- I. om-t ,| ( . kCliniiim- ()i. cale. Paris: F. Alcan, 1899. Pp. ii'O. I'ri,-,. | f r . A clear account of the subject in nix chapter.*, including a short I. of the various theories and discussions coniuvtrd with it. The an- views are well-reasoned and never extreme, and for that reason call tor no special comment. The book is rendered particularly ns.-ful : account of one fresh case and an abstract of sixty-six others, col 1 the scattered literature of the subject. A tolerably complete bibliography is added. T. L. Platon. Von WILHKLM WIXDELHANH r'roimnaim-. Kl.'^ik.i ,ler Philosophic, ix.). Stuttgart, 1!KX). I'p. I'.MI. Prof. Windelbaud's Halo forms a most attractive addition to tin- series of popular sketches of typical philosophers in which it appea is brightly and lucidly written, well proportioned and frequently illumined by tellingly epigrammatic remarks. Originality and sensational i of interpretation are not, of course, to be looked for in a work of the kind, but Prof. Windelband's judgments are throughout distingui-lied l.y sense and scholarly appreciation. It is very refreshing to find that Prof. Windelband has a firm grasp of the fact that Plato was not a mere logic- chopping machine, but primarily a man and a social, political and religious reformer, whose ardent zeal has kindled a fire which, please God, will never be put out while evil persists and men survive to combat it. It is one of the many advantages of this recognition of Plato's personality that it largely dispenses with what would otherwise be the duty of inter)' him into absolute and rigid consistency with himself. For, as philosophers have shown no less than ordinary mortals, it is psychologically quite practicable to entertain in peaceful proximity notions which are logically quite incompatible. If anything, indeed, Prof. Windelband seems at times to go farther than is necessary in admitting discrepancies bet the different strata of Plato's personality: he exaggerates, e.g., the in- congruity between Plato's theological asceticism and his philosophic idealism. For while either of these may easily lead to the corollary that the soul must train itself to overcome the cheats of an illusory world of appearances, nothing hinders the successful achievement of this from being treated as the revelation of man's true 0u<rit. Altogether I'rof. Windelband makes a great feature of the religious side of Plato, whu-h is connected with the Dionysian religion and the eschatology of the my-i Plato's great achievements in this connexion being, ethically, to m< the mystical doctrines and, intellectually, to supply them with a philo- sophic foundation, whereby he became, says Prof. Windelbaml. the first theologian. The incongruity again between Plato's theological and philo- sophical accounts of the soul is perhaps overemphasised, thf difficulties in both being mainly due to an absence of a delink' >n of personality, without which no intelligible view of immortality can be propounded ; but there is no reason to suppose that these difficulties would appear fonnidable to Plato or his contemporaries. In his other- wise excellent account of the theory of Ideas, Prof. Windelband 1 gets hold of what is probably the true key to the situatii that whereas to us, as to Aristotle and to nearly all other philosophers, the phenomenal world is the explicandv.ni, and the ideal theory a mode of explaining it, Plato had, rightly or wrongly, persuaded himself that the