`places' alluded to by Murray. If HE was idle, `I speak of him but
brotherly,' having never held any `place' but that of second to Mr.
Wallace, now Professor of Moral Philosophy at Oxford, in the Greek
Class (Mr. Sellar's). Why was one so idle, in Latin (Mr. Shairp),
in Morals (Mr. Ferrier), in Logic (Mr. Veitch)? but Logic was
unintelligible.

`I must confess,' remarks Murray, in a similar spirit of pensive
regret, `that I have not had any ambition to distinguish myself
either in Knight's (Moral Philosophy) or in Butler's.' {1}

Murray then speaks with some acrimony about earnest students, whose
motive, he thinks, is a small ambition. But surely a man may be
fond of metaphysics for the sweet sake of Queen Entelechy, and,
moreover, these students looked forward to days in which real work
would bear fruit.

`You must grind up the opinions of Plato, Aristotle, and a lot of
other men, concerning things about which they knew nothing, and we
know nothing, taking these opinions at second or third hand, and
never looking into the works of these men; for to a man who wants to
take a place, there is no time for anything of that sort.'

Why not? The philosophers ought to be read in their own language,
as they are now read. The remarks on the most fairy of
philosophers--Plato; on the greatest of all minds, that of
Aristotle, are boyish. Again `I speak but brotherly,' remembering
an old St. Leonard's essay in which Virgil was called `the furtive
Mantuan,' and another, devoted to ridicule of Euripides. But Plato
and Aristotle we never blasphemed.