SOME BOOKS OF THE WEEK.
[Notice to this column doss not neemsarily procludo outnoquent moist.] Professor Gilbert Murray recently delivered the annual "Conway Memorial Lecture" at South Place Institute. His subject was The Stoic Philosophy, and his lecture has now been published (Watts and Co., 6d. net). It will be found that Professor Murray's account of what he calls "the greatest system of organized thought which the mind of man had built up for itself in the Graeco-Roman world before the coming of Christianity " is as instructive and sympathetic as anything he has written. He also relieves the difficulties of his exposition with many entertaining side-issues. We cannot resist repeating the anecdote of the Duke of Wellington and the subaltern, which he tells as an illustration of the argumentative methods adopted by Zeno "The Duke, when he was very old and incredibly distinguished. was telling how once, at mesa in the Peninsula, his servant had opened a bottle of port, and inside found a rat. 'It must have been a very large bottle,' remarked the subaltern. The Duke fixed him with his eye. ' It was a damned small bottle.' Oh:o raitl s::asbalatern, 171111' eigae tth,'esal'n ttelluilbre.wa3A:Iterhy..117,11.
matter bas rested ever since."
It is only very great men who have the strength of mind to argue in this kind of way and Zeno's disciples seem to have fallen below this high dogmatic level, and to have become involved, as a consequence, in all the dangers and difficulties of everyday reasoning.
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