Page:Philosophical Review Volume 27.djvu/337

No. 3.] past, against "epistemologs," "Cartesian nonsense," etc. A writer who says that Hegel would have been surprised if he had found that any one was able to understand him and adds in explanation that "obscurity can cover a multitude of sins" makes a melancholy exhibition of his own philosophical scholarship. In the arguments offered by Dr. Durant in support of the Socratic conception of virtue, the same absolute lack of historic perspective is revealed. The belief that virtue involves the subordination of selfish will to a universal ideal he denounces as a relic of theological superstition. Self-sacrifice he brands as a pious fraud; the conception of virtue it suggests as negative and feminine. The fact never seems to have come to his knowledge that intelligence must frequently wait for its data upon the results of actions which are in the fullest sense ventures, inasmuch as they are undertaken in response to demands as yet inarticulate and ideals whose practicability is yet to be demonstrated by the successful outcome of effort and struggle. He has still to learn the lesson of the Enlightenment, that when in our understanding of man and his social relations we limit ourselves to such facts as have already been established and can be clearly formulated, we condemn our moral and social philosophy to superficiality and early oblivion.

The editor of this volume, a professor of English, explains its main object as being to supply a part of the necessary background for the study of Greek and Latin masterpieces in standard English translations, and to stimulate and rectify the comparison of ancient with modern literature. It may well serve this purpose. It includes essays by such well-known writers on classical subjects as Newman, Jebb, Croiset, Boeckh, Wilamowitz-Moellendorff, Gilbert Murray and Gildersleeve, and poetical extracts from Milton, Shelley and Browning. The editor himself contributes a vigorous defence of the study of the classics in an introductory essay, in the course of which he defines the fundamental elements of the Hellenic genius as direct vision, a high degree of sensitiveness and an extraordinary power of inhibition. This may be compared with Croiset's characterization in the essay selected from him, namely inquisitiveness, in the best sense of the term, in general, and in particular, keenness of intellect, plastic distinctness of conception, clearness in execution, individual liberty combined with regard for tradition, and friendliness to life. The emphasis in Mr. Cooper's analysis on the element of restraint is well grounded in the conception of classicism.

The selections deal in part with such general themes as The Legacy of Greece (Stobart), The Greek Race and its Genius (Croiset), The Nature of Antiquity (Boeckh), The 'Tradition* of Greek Literature (Murray), The