In the BfihfTno in 687 D the interpolated stages have no existenoe in Plato, and, therefore, need no conjectural interpretation. In view of the otherwise pointedness of the note here as to the . reasonableness of the increase of ' the modulus of progression/, the declension upon ' stages in the gradual degeneration of the oligarch' is somewhat disappointing. But for the rest we resist the temptation which so stimulating a book as Dr. Adam's presents to the reviewer to argue for divergent views.

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... It remains to say something of his text Dr. Adam published a text of the Republic so lately as 1897, and the present variants from that text are numerous. Either that text was constructed on inadequate principles-and Dr. Adam expressly affirms that his principle of textual editing has remained the same-or he had not sufficiently summered and wintered what he then printed. That he displays an open mind, and that his present text is the more conservative of the two, are facts which perhaps may go down to the editor's credit, but such notes as ' I think that Plato wrote' so and so, ' although 1 have not ventured to change the text' (ad 463 D), and again, ' the insertion of «u rtrat after TS* Tiros appears to me to solve all the difficulties' (voL L, p. 271), when Dr. Adam having printed that as his text of 1897 has withdrawn it from his text for the present edition, give strong reason to doubt whether Dr. Adam's temperament is one fitted for the responsibilities of the editing of texts. Of Dr. Adam's own conjectures that in 680 D is oertain, that in 464 D almost so. One which he himself has not the courage to print in • 439 A is seductive. That in 507 B is due to a mistaken view of the translation. Our editor's claim to have originated the reading ytyrmTKOfianjv in 508 E involves a curious lapse of memory. He is to be congratulated on having, like Prof. Burnet, restored the o*ff Av ^n of 616 D. We could ill afford to lose what an Oxford undergraduate onoe described as ' the modified future of «schatologioal uncertainty'! HXBBKBT W. BLUNT. Spinosa't Politioal and Ethical Philosophy. By BOBKBT A. Dorr. Glasgow : James Maolehose & Sons. 8vo, pp. xii., 516.