Excerpt from Lectures on the History of Ancient Philosophy Of the Lectures which follow, the most original are those on Plato and the Platonists, which fill nearly the whole of the second volume. They are, unquestionably, as the Author informs us, the result of patient and conscien tious examination of the original documents; and they may be considered as a perfectly independent contribution to our knowledge of the great master of Grecian wisdom. Of the Dialectic and Physics of Plato they are the only exposition at once accurate and popular with which I am acquainted; being more accurate than the French, and incomparably more popular than the German treatises on those departments of the Platonic philosophy. The Author's intimate familiarity with the metaphysical writings of the last century, and especially with the English and Scotch school of psychologists, has enabled him to illus trate the subtle speculations of which he treats in a manner calculated to render them more intelligible to the English mind than they can be made by writers trained solely in the technicalities of modern German schools, or by those who disdain the use of illustration altogether. To the Ethics and Politics of Plato equal justice has not been done, but from notes which have come into my possession I am inclined to think that this defect was in a great measure supplied in the unwritten Lectures on Ethics to which allusion has been made. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.