October 30, 1905, it was (even if it has been slightly toned down before publication) the frankest and the most damaging indictment of the Congo Free State methods that could have appeared from an official source. It renders justice, it is true, to what many British travellers have been eager to point out-the splendid public works achieved on the Congo and its principal tributaries, and the enormous outlay of the King-sovereign's money in the material development of public resources; but it brings to light a state of affairs, as regards all the central basin of the Congo, which is quite as bad as anything depicted by Mr Morel and Consul Casement.

In short, these gentlemen do not seem to have made a single allegation that has not been proved. The most that can be said against Mr Morel is that he has, perhaps, stuck too exclusively to one side of the picture. He would never admit that, if Belgians or Europeans in Belgian employ had done grievous wrong in two thirds of the Congo, they had done great good to the aborigines in the remaining third. It was only on his failure to bring out this redeeming feature that Mr Morel met with any effective criticism at all. We need not refer to the vulgar abuse hurled at him by cosmopolitan condottieri; but his general statements were long contested by Englishmen, Americans, and Belgians of good repute, who had visited only those parts of the Congo Free State where there are no monopolist companies, and where the administrative work of the Belgian officials has been of undoubted merit. Perhaps also he did not bear in mind sufficiently that a good many of the evils which attended the first efforts of the Belgians to put down slavery, internecine war, and general disorder could be found on close examination in contemporaneous British, French, German, or Portuguese work in neighbouring parts of Africa. But, for all time, the Congo natives in the first place, and secondly, Belgium and the King of the Belgians, will, or should, owe a debt of gratitude to Mr Morel. He has brought to light a most grievous wrong. He has convinced the chief person responsible for that wrongKing Leopold-of its existence. The King has assured the world that he has taken the report of his Commission to heart, and that he is about to establish a new committee, to devise for the Congo territories under his sway

a scheme of government which shall satisfy the conscience of the civilised world.

No doubt the outcome of the Congo Free State will be that Belgium will become the guardian of a Black State in Central Africa, and that Belgian commerce will profit richly by the honest development of this enterprise. International governments do not answer in the present imperfect development of humanity. A unified international conscience does not as yet exist. If a state is under the Belgian, Italian, British, German, or French flag, or the flag of any other civilised Power, the subjects of those states who go to work amongst the savages have some regard for the individual honour of their own country. They know that their own country has a definite standard of right and wrong, which may be applied even to the treatment of subject races; and that, if they err against that standard, they will incur opprobrium amongst their fellow-countrymen in their own homes. There is no such nice sensitiveness when the master is international, so to speak. Much the same wrong-doing as has been revealed in such a glaring way in the Congo Free State occurred in the old days in the Egyptian Sudan, amongst the mixed staff of British, Belgian, American, French, Austrian, Italian, German, Greek, and Levantine officials sent by the Khedive of Egypt to work under an Englishman or a Turk. Those who were naturally bad did not care what they did or what atrocities were committed in their name, because they were not there on behalf of their respective fatherlands, but merely as the servants of an irresponsible and distant ruler. So, though we believe to a less serious extent, it has been in parts of the Congo Free State; and the sooner the administration of that state becomes definitely Belgian and answerable to the Belgian national conscience, the better for the Congo, and the better for European rule in Africa.

Art. IV.-PLATO AND HIS PREDECESSORS.

1. Greek Thinkers. A History of Ancient Philosophy. By Theodor Gomperz, Professor at the University of Vienna. Authorised translation. Vol. I by Laurie Magnus; vols. II and III by G. G. Berry. London: Murray, 1901, 1905.

2. The Evolution of Theology in the Greek Philosophers. Gifford Lectures, 1901-2. By Edward Caird, LL.D. Two vols. Glasgow: Maclehose, 1904.

3. The Myths of Plato. Translated, with introductory and other observations, by J. A. Stewart, M.A. London: Macmillan, 1905.

4. The Platonic Conception of Immortality and its connexion with the Theory of Ideas. By R. K. Gaye, M.A. London: Clay, 1904.

5. Platonstudien.

By Ferdinand Horn. Neue Folge. Vienna Hölder, 1904.

THE interest in Greek civilisation, to judge by the steady stream of important and valuable works dealing with its various aspects, seems to be inexhaustible. It would be a mistake, however, to attribute this interest wholly to the gratitude of a society which is conscious of owing the sources of its spiritual wealth, its art, its science, its philosophy, and its theology, almost entirely to the inspirations of Greek genius. For, when a society has so organised itself as to endow a large number of able men for the purpose of studying the ancient languages, and has given them leisure to become learned, it may reasonably expect some intellectual returns from the highly protected industry it has fostered. Whether in the past it has always obtained good value from the traditional systems of classical education, it is needless to discuss. But there is no doubt that the growing danger lest the more direct utilitarianism of a more impatient age should crowd the study of Greek out of the curriculum even of a 'liberal' education, is acting as a salutary stimulus upon the interpreters of Greek culture. Its cause is now pleaded in a more humanly interesting and profitable way. The exactions of the pedantry which is the natural corruption of organised learning are being abated. Our educational practice is no longer quite so

firm in the faith that there is no mental discipline in knowledge acquired without repugnance; nor is our pedagogical theory quite so contemptuous of the psychologists' insistence on the value of interest, or of Aristotle's pathetically optimistic dictum that 'all men by nature desire knowledge.'

Nor should the shallow objection be admitted that everything worth saying about antiquity must already have been said long ago. For, apart from the fact that our knowledge of the past is still growing at no mean rate, it is assuredly not true that the past can undergo no change. Even where no alterations are introduced into the record of past events, an infinity of new meanings and connexions may be perceived in them by the growth of our knowledge. All historical accounts, moreover, rest more or less on selection and combination of the available material, emphasising what seem to the historian the essential features; and these have often to be supplemented by a conjectural filling-up of the gaps in our evidence. Thus differences of standpoint, method, and treatment may often make what is professedly the same tale very different in the telling, while the selection of special aspects for emphasis may engender real and substantial novelty. Hence it is that of the really vital events in history mankind will probably continue to need a fresh interpretation in every generation. Among such events the development of Greek thought must assuredly be counted. We shall find ample illustration of these remarks in the works selected for review.

We may begin with characterising the most ambitious and important work of the series, Professor Theodor Gomperz's 'Greek Thinkers,' planned to cover the whole history of Greek thought, and extending in these three volumes from Thales to Plato. In this learned, lucid, and brilliant narrative the veteran professor of Vienna has embodied the fruits of his lifelong studies in a masterly way. As it has, moreover, been ably and adequately translated by Mr Laurie Magnus and Mr G. G. Berry, we do not hesitate to predict that it will at once take rank as the standard history of Greek philosophy which is adapted to the taste of the present age. To say this is not to disparage the great work of Zeller, which will continue to be indispensable for professional students by reason of the full

ness of its notes and of its references to the primary authorities and the controversies of the learned. Professor Gomperz, on the other hand, by excluding from his text the whole machinery of learning, adapts his work to a wider public, which is also likely to be attracted by a style more lively and readable than Zeller's. He has deliberately relegated the necessary notes and references to appendices, which, if anything, are too concise and technical.

In addition to these innovations of style and arrangement, the novelty of Professor Gomperz's treatment lies in the philosophic standpoint from which he has regarded the evolution of Greek thought. His sympathies are plainly with the empirical attitude towards the problems of life which is implied in the methods of modern science, and he is sedulous to point out the contributions to the making of science which we owe to the Greek thinkers, and aptly to illumine their doctrines by modern scientific analogues. This point of view necessarily brings with it a certain shifting of philosophic perspective, a certain 'transvaluation' of the traditional judgments about the comparative merits of various tendencies in Greek philosophy. The less impressive and imposing schools obtain a fuller appreciation than is usual when the attention is fascinated by the great systems of Plato and Aristotle. The vindication of the Sophists follows, and even outdoes, Grote's; the Atomists are praised at length; the services of the Cynics as the Friars of philosophy, who brought home the meaning of an unworldly life to the humblest circles, are remembered; the Cyrenaics are not merely regarded as a horrible example of the consequences of basely pursuing the pleasure of the moment.

In short, the value of the minor streams of Greek thought in fertilising the soil is generously recognised, while it is pointed out that the main stream which flows from Plato and Aristotle is finally lost in sterile deserts of apriorism and mysticism which contain no real nutriment for the human spirit. To Plato indeed Professor Gomperz evinces a desire to apply much the same treatment as Plato once wished to inflict on Homer: he 'crowns him with flowers' unstintingly, but expels him from the direct line of profitable thought. He does not shrink from pointing out the plentiful paralogisms scat