a just judge and a wise administrator. And if these things did not satisfy, behind them all, and made possible by them, there was the refined enjoyment of all that makes life most worth living-art, literature, science, and philosophy.

Understanding the facts that Aristotle had before him in this light, the reader will have less difficulty in finding his bearings among the distinctions and definitions in which the philosopher attempts to express what is of permanent human interest in them. Thus, when we are told that "man is a political being," we shall understand that Aristotle means more than that his physical needs make union with others a necessity to him. It is of course true that human societies in their origin are unions of individuals or families for the purpose of furnishing food and protection. But they are more. Political organization is necessary to enable man to develop the best that is in him. "Society," says Aristotle, “originates in the need of a livelihood, but it exists for the sake of life."

Similarly, when Aristotle goes on to define the conditions of the good or happy life as the efficient discharge of functions, we shall be prepared to understand that by functions he means the actions that are distinctive of the man and the citizen. It is true that the functions of the man have their roots deep down

The phrase in Ethics, I. c. vii. § 6, is "Man is by nature a citizen ;' in IX. c. ix. § 3, “Man is a political being and made for society." In Politics, III. c. vi. § 3, the full phrase occurs, 'Man is a creature naturally designed for life in a city-state."

in organic functions common to him with the animals, and that the individual comes in point of time before the citizen. But the one class of functions are only in Aristotle's language the potentiality of the other; the functions of man's animal and individual nature find their end and justification in the relation they bear to the functions he is called upon to exercise to the best of his power as a member of a civilized community.

Again, when, going on to define wherein excellence in this discharge of function consists, Aristotle propounds the now familiar doctrine that excellence or virtue is a "mean," we shall be the less likely to misapprehend his teaching, as is not uncommonly done. We shall know that the "mean" must be understood in relation to the permanent ends of the citizen, not to an arbitrarily chosen standard of what is prudent or consistent with good taste in the individual. We shall thus be prepared to find that Aristotle regards his own definition as inadequate to express the full meaning of virtue. When we are seeking for a formal definition we may describe the good act as a mean, yet when we look to its essential nature it is an extreme-the best that can be done.

Again, when, passing beyond the attempt to fix in what sense the cardinal virtues or capacities of the Greek citizen-his courage, his self-command, his liberality-are a mean, we come to the relation of the virtuous life to the highest form of good living open to man, viz. the life of reason or complete self-consciousness, we shall be prepared to hear of other conditions.

that must be added to virtue in its narrower sense. We have seen that the virtues of the private citizen, or even of the citizen-soldier, fall short of a complete equipment for the citizen's functions. To these have to be added the capacities of the legislator and administrator, which, when we seek to analyze them, are all seen to centre in the one supreme capacity of insight into the true purpose of social life and the means by which it may be forwarded through the right conduct of the citizens.

Finally, we shall be prepared to understand an extension of the ideal of happiness which might at first first appear inconsistent with the civic ideal already described. In his enthusiasm for the life which is "selfsufficient, leisurely, inexhaustible," something, in truth, more than human, Aristotle may appear to have overshot the mark and drawn too deep a line between week-day and sabbath. Whatever explanation we may be able to give of this dualism in so great a thinker, what has been said above of the function of art and religion among the Greeks will enable us partly to understand what is meant by such a claim. As the Parthenon crowned the Acropolis, the Great Dionysia the Athenian year, so the life of leisure was the crown of the secular employments of the citizen's life. As, however, his art and his poetry were never thought of by the Greek as something apart from his common life, but as palpable witnesses to its inward and spiritual meaning, so leisure and contemplation were not something superadded to the other ends of life, but a means of enabling the citizen to realize more

fully what these ends imply. Through them he thought he knew

"The hills where his life rose

And the sea where it goes."

Through them he thought he saw that in renouncing merely individual ends he was identifying himself with one that was greater and more permanent, and yet, in a deeper sense, his own.

CHAPTER I.

THE SCIENCE OF ETHICS.

"All indistinctly apprehend a bliss

On which the soul may rest, the hearts of all
Yearn after it, and to that wished bourn

All therefore strive."

DANTE.

§ 1. The Supreme End of Action as the Subject of

Ethics.

[Ethics, Bk. I. c. i.; c. ii. § 1.]

IN the opening sentence of the Ethics Aristotle states the fundamental assumption of his moral philosophy, viz. that all human conduct-"all action directed by choice "implies some final end or purpose. By this, as the sequel shows, he means not only that all conduct involves a consciously conceived end or purposesuch a proposition would be merely verbal, seeing that "choice" necessarily implies conscious purposebut that underneath all our ordinary purposes there lies, whether clearly conceived or not, some supreme purpose which is both the source and explanation of them. That such a supreme end actually is presupposed in ordinary life is not immediately obvious. True, we do not ordinarily conceive of our lives as