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The first symptom of earnestness and coming success which we hope to see is honest, loyal, and hearty support, from the more advanced ranks of the Liberal party, to any proposition which may be made in the direction which they profess to desire. It is needless to say, for the country, the constituencies, and the House of Commons know it well, that nothing has so much tended to discredit this question and retard its progress, as the endeavour which some politicians of that school have made to identify its success with objects entirely foreign to it, and in the main distasteful to the country. While these pages are passing through the press Mr. Bright's speech at Rochdale has indicated that the lessons of the past have not been thrown away upon him, and that he now recognises the absolute necessity of moderation, concert, and union. Had he never spoken otherwise on the question of the Franchise than he did at Rochdale, his present support would have been more effective, and perhaps the past history of the question might have been altered. But any assistance hitherto which he has rendered to efforts in this direction has been so marred by conditions, prophecies, and doubts, so full of grudging praise and implied censure, and so linked with his peculiar views, as to have had far more effect in cooling friends, alarming the timid, and alienating the moderate, than in conciliating the elements of

success.

He cannot, of course, undo the past, or unspeak his spoken words. The progress which he made through the country in 1858 is not yet forgotten, and will meet him when he least desires it, and both he and the Government to which he tenders his support will suffer by the recollection of it. He has now learnt, and manfully avows it, that to insist on discrediting a measure for the Extension of the Franchise, because it does not deal with the Ballot, is not the way to promote the cause he has at heart; and has given to his party very earnest, sensible, and well-meant advice as the only means by which such a measure as he hopes for can be carried. To ensure success will require all the moderation and all the cordiality with which he can inspire his friends. They are not more numerous in this Parliament than they were in the last. They may be strong enough to upset a government, but are far from being in a position to prescribe a policy, and can only be strong for action by hearty and united co-operation with the Government.

Mr. Bright's speech at Rochdale would have been more useful, although we appreciate the difficulties of his position, had he not held out the prospect of future agitation. It is not the

way to induce a man to co-operate with you in what he wishes or consents to, to tell him that you will use the act when accomplished to help you to do what he dislikes and dissents from. The bugbear of the Ballot, it is true, is no very awful phantom now. Familiarity has robbed it of its terrors, and has bred the proverbial contempt. The sooner it is discarded from any position in the Liberal creed the better. It was a mistake from the first, and nothing will now inspire it with animation. The redistribution of seats is a very different question; but it stands entirely apart from the Extension of the Suffrage, and may very properly wait for its period of solution.

Meanwhile let us hope that the reason and moderation of one extreme of the Liberal ranks, and liberality and love of the people on the part of the other, may render Earl Russell's supporters a compact phalanx on the meeting of Parliament. The difficulties which we have indicated cannot be concealed. They lie on the surface of political society, and in one shape or other they must be met and surmounted. Any proposal on the part of Government may exceed or may fall short of what either section would desire. But the object to be attained is great; it is truly a question in which individual opinion may fitly bend to harmonious action. Without this, the Liberal party will simply invite another failure, and throw away the benefit which the recent election has bestowed on them.

The question could not be in more appropriate hands than those of Earl Russell. We shall watch with anxiety and interest the declaration of the policy of the Government. The crisis is far from presenting the elements of danger which prevailed in 1832; but with a desire to accept what is practicable on the one side, and reasonable confidence in the people on the other, we trust that the ensuing Session may see the problem of the Extension of the Suffrage happily solved.

No. CCLII. will be published in April next.

THE

EDINBURGH REVIEW,

APRIL, 1866.

No. CCLII.

ART. I.- Plato and the other Companions of Sokrates. By GEORGE GROTE, F.R.S., &c. 8vo. 3 vols. London: 1865.

THE

HE readers of Mr. Grote's History of Greece' were not likely to forget the hope held out in its concluding volume, that he who had so well interpreted the political life of Hellas would delineate and judge that great outburst of speculative thought, by which, as much as by her freedom, Greece has been to the world what Athens according to Pericles was to Greece, a course of education. It might have been safely predicted, that the same conscientious research, the same skilful discrimination of authenticated fact from traditional misapprehension or uncertified conjecture, and the same rare power of realising different intellectual and moral points of view, which were conspicuous in the History, and nowhere more than in the memorable chapters on the Sophists and on Sokrates,. would find congenial occupation in tracing out the genuine lineaments of Plato, Aristotle, and their compeers. But the present work does more than merely keep the promise of Mr. Grote's previous achievements-it reveals new powers: had it not been written the world at large, might never have known, except on trust, the whole range of his capacities and endowments. Though intellects exercised in the higher philosophy might well perceive that such a book as the History of 'Greece' could not have been produced but by a mind similarly disciplined, the instruction which lay on the surface of that great work was chiefly civic and political; while the speculations of the Grecian philosophers, and emphatically of Plato, range over the whole domain of human thought and curiosity, from etymology up to cosmogony, and from the discipline of the music-school and the gymnasium to the most

VOL. CXXIII. NO. CCLII.

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vast problems of metaphysics and ontology. Many even of Mr. Grote's admirers may not have been prepared to find, that he would be as much at home in the most abstract metaphysical speculations as among the concrete realities of political institutions-would move through the one region with the same easy mastery as through the other and would bring before us, along with the clearest and fullest explanation of ancient thought, mature and well-weighed opinions of his own, manifesting a command of the entire field of speculative philosophy which places him in the small number of the eminent psychologists and metaphysicians of the age.

The work of which we now give an account, though complete in itself, brings down the history of Greek philosophy only to Plato and his generation; but a continuation is promised, embracing at least the generation of Aristotle; which, by the analogy of the concluding chapters of the present work, may be construed as implying an estimate of the Stoics and Epicureans. If to this were added a summary of what is known to us concerning the Pythagorean revival and the later Academy, no portion of purely Greek thought would remain untreated of; for Neoplatonism, an aftergrowth of late date and little intrinsic value, was a hybrid product of Greek and Oriental speculation, and its place in history is by the side of Gnosticism. What contact it has with the Greek mind is with that mind in its decadence; as the little in Plato which is allied to it belongs chiefly to the decadence of Plato's own mind. We are quite reconciled to the exclusion from Mr. Grote's plan, of this tedious and unsatisfactory chapter in the history of human intellect. But such an exposition as he is capable of giving of Aristotle, will be hardly inferior in value to that of Plato. The latter, however, was the most needed; for Plato presents greater difficulties than Aristotle to the modern mind; more of our knowledge of the master, than of the pupil, is only apparent, and requires to be unlearnt; and much more use has been made of what the later philosopher can teach us, than of the earlier.

Though the writings of Plato supply the principal material of Mr. Grote's three volumes, the portion of them which does not relate directly to Plato is of great interest and value. The first two chapters contain as full an account as our information admits, of the forms of Greek philosophy which preceded Sokrates; and the two which conclude the work recount the little which is known (except in the case of Xenophon it is very little) of the other Socratici viri' and their speculations: the Megaric school, commencing with

Eukleides, the Cynic, with Antisthenes, the Cyrenaic or Hedonistic, with Aristippus. All these were personal companions of Sokrates, and their various and conflicting streams of thought did not flow out of a primitive intellectual fountain. opened by him, but issued from the rock in different places at the touch of his magical wand; for it was his profession and practice to make others think, not to think for them. Concerning Sokrates himself, though in one sense nearly the whole book relates to him, there is no express notice in these volumes, the narrative and estimate which we read in the History of Greece' being sufficient.

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Some knowledge of the earlier Hellenic thinkers is necessary to a full understanding of Plato. Unfortunately the materials are defective, and almost wholly second-hand, a few fragments only of the original authors having been preserved by the citations of later writers. We are in possession, however, of what were regarded by their successors as the fundamental doctrines of each; but there is some difficulty in knowing what to make of them. These first gropings of the speculative intellect have so little in common with modern scientific habits, that the modern mind does not easily accommodate itself to them. The physical theories seem so absurd, and the metaphysical ones so unintelligible, that there needs some stress of thought to enable us to perceive how eminently natural they were. Multiplied failures have taught us the unwelcome lesson, that man can only arrive at an understanding of nature by a very circuitous route; that the great questions are not accessible directly, but through a multitude of smaller ones, which in the first ardour of their investigations men overlooked and despised-though they are the only questions sufficiently simple and near at hand to disclose the real laws and processes of nature, with which as keys we are afterwards enabled to unlock such of her greater mysteries as are really within our reach. This process, which human impatience was late in thinking of, and slow in learning to endure, is an eminently artificial one; and the mind which has been trained to it has become, happily for mankind, so highly artificialised, that it has forgotten its own natural mode of procedure. The natural man, in the words of Bacon's emphatic condemnation, naturam rei in ipsâ re perscrutatur. He neither can nor will lay a regular siege to his object, approach it by a series of intermediate positions, and possess himself first of the outworks; he will make but one leap into the citadel: and since, to his freshly awakened curiosity, no inquiry seems worth pursuing which promises less than an explanation of the

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