French philosophy no one calls Plato to mind more than he does.

He possessed a charming mind, a very lofty character, and was a marvellous
writer.

TO-DAY.--The living French philosophers whom we shall content
ourselves with naming because they are living and receive contemporary
criticism rather than that of history, are MM. Fouillee, Theodule Ribot,
Liard, Durckheim, Izoulet, and Bergson.

THE FUTURE OF PHILOSOPHY.--It is impossible to forecast in what
direction philosophy will move. The summary history we have been able to
trace sufficiently shows, as it seems to us, that it has no regular advance
such that by seeing how it has progressed one can conjecture what path it
will pursue. It seems in no sense to depend, or at all events, to depend
remarkably little, at any period, on the general state of civilization
around it, and even for those who believe in a philosophy of history there
is not, as it appears to me, a philosophy of the history of philosophy. The
only thing that can be affirmed is that philosophy will always exist in
response to a need of the human mind, and that it will always be both an
effort to gather scientific discoveries into some great general ideas and
an effort to go beyond science and to seek as it can the meaning of the
universal enigma; so that neither philosophy, properly speaking, nor even
metaphysics will ever disappear. Nietzsche has said that life is valuable
only as the instrument of knowledge. However eager humanity may be and
become for branches of knowledge, it will be always passionately and
indefatigably anxious about complete knowledge.