Page:The religion of Plutarch, a pagan creed of apostolic times; an essay (IA religionofplutar00oakeiala).pdf/17

 The subject of Plutarch's "Moralia" has also been touched in a few contributions to the current Literature of the Reviews. The article on "Plutarch" appearing over Paley's initials in the "Encyclopædia Britannica," and giving a brief statement of the subjects dealt with in the different tracts in the "Moralia," almost entirely exhausts the short list of English literary contributions to the treatment of this portion of Plutarch's work. Paley declared in the article in question that the "Moralia" were "practically almost unknown to most persons in Britain, even to those who call themselves scholars." This sweeping assertion is not by any means true to-day, although it is still the case that, so far as the literary presentment of results is concerned, the "Ethics" of Plutarch are a neglected field of research.

Volkmann, in the "Leben und Schriften" part of his work, carefully discusses the authenticity of each tract in the generally recognized list of Plutarch's writings, while in the volume dealing with the "Philosophie" he gives an exhaustive analysis of the greater portion of them. Recognizing that Plutarch had no special philosophical system of his own, Volkmann endeavours to remedy this deficiency by the application of a systematic method of treatment with regular branches of "synthetic" and "analytic" investigation. The "synthetic" branch of Volkmann's method is devoted to a discussion of Plutarch's philosophic standpoint; to an examination of his polemic against the Stoics and Epicureans; and to the consideration of his relation to Plato, which Volkmann