DAVID G. RITCHIE, Philosophical Studies. 101 material, passing it on to Aristotle, from whom Dante derived I' Amor die move il Sole e I'altre Stelle. There is another line of tradition with two strands, one consisting of Posidonius and the Somnium Scipionis, the other of certain "astronomical apoca- lypses ". What we are told of these is deeply interesting, and the theory of the development of apocalypse from sacramental ritual is most suggestive. It is impossible to go into details here, but the general result is to put Plato the mythologist into his proper historical place as one of the most important links in a great chain of mythical tradition stretching from primitive thought and practice to the Divina Commedia. To have shown this is, I take it, the great achievement of the book, and scholars will no longer have any excuse if they look for allegory in Plato's myths. They have their roots in something older than any philosophy and possessing a vitality which is denied to philosophical systems. That, I think, is the real lesson of the book, and it is so important that we may overlook the un-Platonic doctrine of the ' Ideas of Keason ' and the 4 Vegetative Soul '. JOHN BURNET. Philosophical Studies. By DAVID G. RITCHIE, M.A., LL.D., sometime Professor of Logic and Metaphysics in the Uni- versity of St. Andrews. Edited, with a memoir, by Prof. LATTA. London : Macmillan & Co., 1905. Pp. ix., 355. THE interest of this volume is largely biographical, or at least per- sonal. The philosophical fragments which it contains are probably of too slight a texture to have much permanent value ; but they are highly instructive as throwing a side light on the more purely speculative aspects of the thought of one who made his reputa- tion chiefly within the domain of political theory. The light thus gained is greatly augmented and strengthened by the very well written memoir evidently a labour of love which is contributed by Prof. Latta. The following sketch of Prof. Eitchie's personality, taken from the introductory memoir, seems singularly felicitous. ' His spiritual lineaments were like those which in some people make every portrait a disappointment. Those who knew him well will always, in recalling him, think first of the simple, indefinable charm which eludes description, a charm not genial in the com- mon sense (for he was reserved without being austere), nor flashing and wayward (for though he could coin an epigram on occasion, he shone rather than glittered), but a charm of exalted sanity, the charm of one who takes you, as it were, a few hundred feet higher in thought than you had ever been before, and gives you a new outlook on familiar things. ... It seemed to him that much error in judgment arises from making too hard a distinction between intellectual and moral virtues and defects, and he held that intel-
