To be able to publish a thesis (The Growth of
Plato's Ideal Theory, by Sir James George Frazer. Macmillan. 7s. 6d.) fifty years after it was written, and to be able to say in the Preface, " I am encouraged to believe that it truly represents the rise and fall of the Ideal Theory in Plato's mind," is indeed an achievement. And this book will have to be in all libraries not only as completing the works of the distinguished author, but also as a profound study in Platonism. The disad- vantage of the book is that it is far too technical for any but the experts ; while for them, as the author notes, much of what it contains has in the interval been said by others. Its advantage is that it demonstrates, with the meticulous scholarship of its period, the line of development from know- ledge being regarded as the result of sensations to the full theory of the Ideals with its application to the immortality of the soul and the existence of God. And then came the decline. As the author says in his preface : " It is true that in the Phaedrus the Ideas blaze up in all their splendour, but it was for the last time ; it was the sunset glory, the rosy flush on the clouds that hung about the descending luminary. They had come like clouds in the meridian of Plato's fancy, and like clouds they vanished in the evening of his days. In the deepening shadows the dreamer awoke, and, behold, it was a dream."
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