18 JANUARY 1919, Page 21

The Neo-Platoniets. By Thomas Whittaker. (Cambridge University Press. 12a. net.)—Mr.

Whittaker's able and attract- ive book on the last philosophic school of the ancient world has reached a second edition, to which the author has added a long essay, filling a third of the volume, on the Commentaries of Proclua, the fifth-century student of Plato. The Neo-Platoniets arc now receiving much attention, both as the link between the great Greeks and the modems, and as philosophers who exercised a considerable influence on early Christian thought before and after Justinian closed the Academy in 529. Mr. Whittakeds book is the best account in English of the school as a whole, and in its new form it is much improved.