PLATO. 89 



with the courtezan Lais. Neither Speusippus nor Xenocrates appear 

 to have deviated in the slightest degree from the general system of 

 Plato. But Polemo, who succeeded Xenocrates, atoned for a youth 

 of intemperance, by rushing in his more sedate years into an extreme 

 bordering on asceticism. The austerities of his own practice, the 

 strictness of his sense of duty, and the ambiguous language which he 

 seems to have employed as to the soul of the universe, almost make 

 one imagine that he anticipated the system of Zeno. Polemo was 

 succeeded by his intimate friend Crates, who had long been connected 

 with him by congeniality of disposition, but who died after a short 

 sway in the Academy. It is not improbable, indeed, that the positive 

 and dogmatic manner of Polemo and Crates produced that revulsion 

 which ensued upon the death of the latter, and occasioned their suc- 

 cessors to indulge in greater latitude of speculation, and in more 

 of that temperate and modest suspense of judgment, which is con- 

 tent to consider the conclusions of practical reason as merely ap- 

 proximations to certainty ; but is at the same time willing to act upon 

 probabilities, since man must act somehow or other, and it is most 

 reasonable to act according to such semblances of truth as the mind 

 can arrive at. 



Such was the course of the old Academy. The history of the new 

 Academy, (for we agree with Middleton in rejecting the distinction of 

 a middle Academy), beginning with Arcesilas, will be connected with 

 the history of its great ornament, Cicero. Some account of the later 

 Platonists will be presented to our readers in the life of Plotinus, who 

 wasted a genius of the highest order in idle reveries, and whose 

 writings, clouded as they are with mysticism and the spirit of ascetical 

 illusion, occasionally glow with the fervour of the richest imagination, 

 and with an exuberance of philosophic imagery. Indeed, without a 

 powerful genius, he could never have affected that wonderful change 

 in the Platonic school which he did effect, though to us it appears a Modern 

 lamentable corruption. From this time, Plato has seldom been studied 

 except with the aid of the commentaries, or in conjunction with the 

 treatises of this later school ; and at the revival of learning, the learned 

 Florentine, Ficino, who procured the printing of Plato, performed the 

 same service for the illustrious leaders of the later school, and illus- 

 trated his edition of Plato with many commentaries, in which he 

 showed himself at least an equal adept in the mysteries of Plotinus 

 and Porphyry, as in the sense of Plato. Cardinal Bessario was a 

 Platonist of more discrimination, and one whose intercourse with the 

 world had perhaps given him more tact and address in selecting the 

 practical works of Plato, and in illustrating those of a more obscure 

 cast, than the learned but recluse Florentine. Bessario's work, in reply 

 to George of Trebizond, " the calumniator of Plato," is a very masterly 

 performance, but its celebrity has not continued equal to its merit. 

 Bessario has there fully developed many of those arguments which 

 have been used of late years by the admirers of Plato, particularly 



