A COMMENTARY ON PLATO'S " TIMAEUS." By A. E. Taylor.
(Clarendon Press. 42s.)—We have been waiting with the highest expectation for Professor Taylor's work on Plato's Titnaeus, and its publication is a most important event in scholarship and in philosophy. We should advise every reader who still retains some Greek to buy the Commentary, and re-read the dialogue with Professor Taylor's notes constantly at hand. :The Thames is one of the most important texts for Greek scientific theory ; and, indeed, as Professor Taylor makes clear, for scientific theory in general. The thesis that Profesior Taylor propounds is that the Timaeus is not a diseussion of plato's own views ; it represents the Pythagorean tradiiion Of physical speculation, and Timaeus himself turns the tradition. to new account, in adapting it to the more " modern " problems of biology. It is impossible to give an adequate impression of the depth and variety of Professor Taylor's treatment ; he illustrates the dialogue, not only from the entire range of Greek thought, but also from the works of contemporary physicists and mathematicians such as Eddington and VVIntehead. Thus he makes age-old problems into living issues, and increases our consciousness of the debt we owe to Greece.
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