come to life again till the third century of our era, when Platonism was revived at Rome by Plotinus. It is only quite recently that historians of Greek philosophy have begun to do justice to 'Neoplatonism'. That is partly due to the contemporary philosophical tendencies noted at the beginning of this paper, and partly to historical investigations into the philosophy of the Middle Ages, which is more and more seen to be dependent mainly on Neoplatonism down to and including the system of St. Thomas Aquinas. It was in fact the most decisive fact in the history of Western European civilization that Plotinus founded his school at Rome rather than at Athens or Alexandria; for that is how Western Europe became the real heir to the philosophy of Greece. Every one knows, of course, that Plotinus was a 'mystic', but the term is apt to suggest quite wrong ideas about him. He is often spoken of still as a man who introduced oriental ideas into Greek philosophy, and he is popularly supposed to have been an Egyptian. That is most improbable; and, if it were true, it would only make it the more remarkable that, though he certainly studied at Alexandria for eleven years, he never even mentions the religion of Isis, which was so fashionable at Rome in his day, and which had fascinated so genuine a Greek as Plutarch some generations before. There is no doubt that what Plotinus believed himself to be teaching was genuine Platonism, and that he had prepared himself for the task by a careful study of Aristotle and even of Stoicism, so far as that served his purpose. No doubt he was too great a man to make himself the mere mouthpiece of another's thought; but, for all that, he was the legitimate successor of Plato, and it may be added that M. Robin, who has taken upon himself the arduous task of extracting Plato's real philosophy from the writings of Aristotle, has come to the conclusion that there is a great deal more 'Neoplatonism' in Plato than is sometimes supposed.