Page:Philosophical Review Volume 3.djvu/90

74 that spiritualism which Descartes and M. Cousin are supposed to have established as the basis of sound philosophizing and the mainstay of religion and morality. Instead of grappling closely with definite psychological and historical problems, they are prone to discourse eloquently of the achievements of that mythological entity, la Dialectique, or describe the gnostic evolutions of the Idea.

An exception to this disparaging generalization might perhaps be made in favor of the ingenious book of M. Alfred Fouillée, one of the ablest representatives of the psychological movement in French philosophy that dates from Taine. But M. Fouillée's book was a youthful production, and, though he has published a second edition, he has not seen fit to revise his appreciations in the light of maturer thought, nor to qualify himself for his task by closer study of the Platonic text.

M. Charles Bénard's recently published work on Platon et sa philosophie does not claim to fill this gap in French literature,—to do for France what Zeller and Susemihl have done for Germany, what Grote and Jowett have done for England. The book, so the preface informs us, is addressed not to savants and scholars by profession, but to the enlightened public. Doubtful and disputed problems of the Platonic philosophy are generally dismissed with a brief citation of the German authorities sic et non, and the cavalier remark, "Nous n'approfondirons pas cette question-lá." But M. Bénard (rightly) believes that, after setting aside disputable matters and making allowance for the elusive, negative, and purely dialectical character of much of Plato's writing, there still remains a considerable body of intelligible, distinct Platonic doctrine. And this body of doctrine he endeavors to set forth for the young student and general reader with French clearness of statement and symmetry of arrangement.

His method is very different from that of the latest contribution to the literature of Platonism in England, also nominally addressed to the enlightened public. Mr. Walter Pater's book is a masterpiece of what Mrs. Ward calls "historic translation." He enables us to feel in a concrete, vivid way Plato's attitude towards the speculative, the moral, the political world of the fourth century, But he does not retain Plato's cadres, nor in any large measure his technical vocabulary. It is all translated into terms of modern feeling and ninteenth century culture. There is nothing of this historic translation to be found in M. Bénard's book.

He adopts for a ground plan the implicit division of the Platonic