Except as historical curiosities, little can be said in behalf of the scientific value of the “Opinions of the Philosophers,” the “Questions,” and the “Symposiacs.” They are, for the most part, very crude opinions; many of them so puerile that one would believe that Plutarch in his haste adopted the notes of his younger auditors, some of them jocosely misreporting the dogma of the professor, who laid them aside as _memoranda_ for future revision, which he never gave, and they were posthumously published. Now and then there are hints of superior science. You may cull from this record of barbarous guesses of shepherds and travellers statements that are predictions of facts established in modern science. Usually, when Thales, Anaximenes, or Anaximander are quoted, it is really a good judgment. The explanation of the rainbow, of the floods of the Nile, and of the _remora_, &c., are just; and the bad guesses are not worse than many of Lord Bacon’s. His Natural History is that of a lover and poet, and not of a physicist. His humanity stooped affectionately to trace the virtues which he loved in the animals also. “Knowing and not knowing is the affirmative or negative of the dog; knowing you is to be your friend; not knowing you, your enemy.” He quotes Thucydides, saying, “that not the desire of honor only never grows old, but much less also the inclination to society and affection to the State, which continue even in ants and bees to the very last.” * * * * * But though curious in the questions of the schools on the nature and genesis of things, his extreme interest in every trait of character, and his broad humanity, lead him constantly to Morals, to the study of the Beautiful and Good. Hence his love of heroes, his rule of life, and his clear convictions of the high destiny of the soul. La Harpe said “that Plutarch is the genius the most naturally moral that ever existed.”