to present. But unfortunately we do not appear to possess at first hand Aristotle's execution of this part of his task. What happened may perhaps have been this: when Aristotle arrived at this point, he put aside the subject of Justice, to be treated after he had written his ‘Politics’ and had cleared his views on the foundations of Justice in the State. At the same time he put aside the subject of the Intellectual excellences, perhaps till he should have written his ‘Metaphysics.’ It must be remembered that he kept many parts of his Encyclopædia in course of construction at once, and he would drop one part and take up another, as suited his train of thought. In the present case he did not entirely abandon his ‘Ethics,’ but went on to write the three last books, merely leaving the centre part to be filled in subsequently. Doubtless the matter for that centre part was expounded to and discussed in the Peripatetic school, but Aristotle probably never himself expressed it in literary form. When, however, Eudemus came to write his paraphrase of the ‘Ethics,’ he was enabled to fill in the gap which still existed in them by supplying a portion, the matter of which partly came from school notes and partly from Aristotle’s other writings, while the language was that of Eudemus himself, continuous with the rest of the paraphrase. Afterwards Nicomachus, or some other editor, took this supplementary piece from the ‘Eudemian Ethics’ and stuck it in as Books V., VI., VII. of the ‘Ethics’ of Aristotle.
The theory of Justice which has thus come down to us as Aristotle’s, is indistinctly stated in Book V. Itfix typo
