the ‘Nicomachean Ethics,’ upon some of the matter of knowledge—namely, Aristotle’s theory of human life. But what strikes us on reading the early chapters of this treatise is that, when he began to write it, Aristotle had no clear conception of the existence of Moral Philosophy as a separate science. The question which he proposes is, What is the end, or supreme good, aimed at by human action? He adds that the science which will have to settle this will be a branch of Politics—that is, of State-philosophy;—for the chief good of the State and of the individual are identical, only the one is on a grander scale than the other. In this exordium we may notice two especially Greek features: first, the cardinal question proposed for the philosophy of human life is not, What is the duty of man? but, What is the chief good for man? Secondly, the individual is so far subordinated to and identified with the State, that the summum bonum for the latter includes that of the former. In Aristotle’s ‘Politics’ (VII. iii. 8), the chief good for a State is portrayed as consisting in the development and play of speculative thought, all fit conditions thereto having been provided. The idea is—a Greek city, with a slave population doing the hard work, wherein the citizens for the most part can live as gentlemen, and a large proportion of them may devote their lives to intellectual pursuits. Aristotle thought that the highest aim for a State was to turn out philosophers, and that the highest aim for an individual was to be a philosopher. Thus there is a seeming identity of aims; yet still in writing his ‘Ethics’
