All sorts of views have been held as to some editors even thinking that in a corrupt form it contains a reference to the or peers of Sparta. It really belongs to the first words of the passage and should be placed before or after . Both parties alike, Sparta in particular, were inclined towards an agreement. does not necessarily imply exactly equal degrees. Cf. for instance Arist. Poet. 4. 1448 b 13

I. ON Aristotle's supposed inconsistency in his treatment of Epic as a form of Mimesis. In his note on the Poetic c. i, 1447, a, 15, Mr. Ingram Bywater writes: ‘ In his use of , in the Poetics Aristotle has fallen into a grave inconsistency, as he distinctly makes it in one place (3,1448, a, 21) include narrative, and in another (24, 1460, a, 9) exclude it.’ Yet I venture to think that a careful examination of the two passages will show that Aristotle is perfectly consistent, and that Mr. Bywater like his predecessors has completely misunderstood the second passage.

It is now generally recognized that Plato's whole theory of the Ideal State is based upon the principle that human society is ‘natural’ As against the antisocial doctrines of certain sophists, this proposition means, in the first place, a denial of the view that society originated in a primitive contract. But Plato does not merely reject this false opinion; he also sets up an alternative doctrine that the state is natural, in the sense that a human society constructed on ideal lines1 would be one that should reflect the structure of man's soul, and give full play to the legitimate functions of every part of his nature. Accordingly, it is vital to his purpose in the Republic to show that the division of the Ideal State into three classes—Guardians, Auxiliaries, Producers—corresponds to the division of the soul into three ‘parts’ ‘kinds’ or ‘forms’ —the Reflective, Spirited, and Appetitive.

That three of them were popularly regarded as correlated with the three ages of human life; (2) that the structure of early Greek societies, as of other primitive societies, was based on the distinction of three main age-grades, of which the three virtues are characteristic; (3) that Plato's own Ideal State has the same age basis underlying the other features peculiar to it, and is indeed transparently modelled on the Spartan constitution; (4) that it is therefore probable that Plato started with the three divisions of his State and their several virtues, and then, proceeding on the assumption that the ‘natural’ State must reflect on a large scale the constitution of the individual ‘nature,’ arranged the structure of the soul to correspond with his polity.

The review of Prof. Bywater′s new edition of the Poetics (Classical Review, December, 1910) once more raised the question of the interpretation of dfuipria in Aristotle′s definition of the tragic hero (Poetics, Ch. xiii.)