A new interest of late has awakened in Anthony Ashley Cooper, third Earl of Shaftesbury, through the realization that he is the fountain-head of much of the æsthetics and ethics prevalent in the last century and in our own time. While it has been generally recognized that the background of Shaftesbury's thought is classical, as was to be expected of any student and thinker of his period, deriving both from Stoicism and from Platonism and neo-Platonism, attention and interest have chiefly been concentrated upon those aspects of his thought which look toward the coming romantic movement. Also, such classical influences as have been recognized are usually interpreted from the post-renaissance point-of-view, as agreeing in the main with such modifications of Platonic and neo-Platonic thought as are referred to in discussing “Platonism” of Shelley. Thus C. W. Weiser enlarges upon Shaftesbury's indebtedness to the Platonic and neo-Platonic traditions—terms which he uses, as he explains, in a very general sense, as pertaining to the life of the feeling (the Platonic way) in opposition to the life of the reason (the Aristotelian way).