Page:Mind (New Series) Volume 8.djvu/427

 ALFRED w. BENN, The Philosophy of Greece, etc. 413 Stoic and Epicurean naturalism. The little that is now said hardly agrees with some remarks in the earlier book on the de- tachment of the Neo-Platonists from the life of their time. "That all things proceed from the One, and aspire to be reabsorbed into the One," Mr. Benn says of Plotinus, " is the master- thought of his philosophy ; and in that thought the abstract unity to which Home had ever tended towards which she still tends found its triumphant metaphysical expression." As a parallel, the historian of modern thought might equally well assert that Spinoza's doctrine of Substance was a metaphysical formulation of the unity of the Dutch Eepublic ; in the place of which Leibniz put a multiplicity of monads because he had observed the " particularist " tendencies of the German States within the Empire. The true reason, indeed, for leaving off at this point of the history seems to be that the method of direct reference to geographical or political circum- stance is no longer applicable. Circumstance tells, no doubt, in the early stages. Later, it is mainly the philosophical tradition that tells. T. WHITTAKEK.