The thirteenth century saw a change. Aristotle came to dis place Plato as "the philosopher," partly in consequence of the immediately perceived value of his strictly scientific works as a storehouse of well-digested natural facts, partly from the bril liant success of the enterprise carried through by St. Thomas Aquinas, the reconstruction of philosophical theology on an Aristotelian basis. Plato is, however, by no means supplanted in the Thomist system; the impress of Augustine on Western thought has been far too deep for that. Augustine's "exemplar ism," that is, the doctrine of Forms in the version, ultimately derived from Philo of Alexandria, which makes the Forms "creative thoughts" of God, is an integral part of the Thomist metaphysics, though it is now denied that the exemplars are themselves cognizable by the human intellect, which has to collect its "forms," as best it can, from the data of sense.
Directly or through Augustine, the influence of Plato, not only on strictly philosophic thought but on popular ethics and religion, has repeatedly come to the front in ages of general spiritual requickening, and shows no signs of being on the wane.
Two "revivals" in particular are famous. The first is that of the 16th century, marked by the Latin translation of Marsilio Ficino and the foundation of Lorenzo dei Medici's fantastic Florentine Academy. What was revived then was not so much the spirit of Plato as that of the least sober of the Neo-Platonists; the influence of the revival was felt more in literature than in philosophy or morals, but in literature its importance may be measured by the mere mention of such names as Michelangelo, Sidney, Spenser.
In the 17th century, Plato, seen chiefly through the medium of Plotinus, supplied the inspiration of a group of noble thinkers who were vindicating a more inward morality and religion against the unspiritual secularism and erastianism of Hobbes, the so-called "Cambridge Platonists," Whichcote, Henry More, Cud worth, John Smith. At the present moment the writings of A. N. Whitehead contain an attempt to work out a philosophy of the sciences which confessedly connects itself with the ideas of the Timaeus.