Page:The ethics of Aristotle.djvu/291



. For this term, as here employed, our language contains no equivalent expression except an inconvenient paraphrase.

There are three senses which it bears in this treatise: the first (in which it is here employed) is its strict etymological signification, “The science of Society;” and this includes everything which can bear at all upon the well-being of Man in his social capacity. “Quicquid agunt homines nostri est farrago libelli.” It is in this view that it is fairly denominated most commanding and inclusive.

The second sense (in which it occurs next, just below) is “Moral Philosophy.” Aristotle explains the term in this sense in the Rhetoric (i. 2). He has principally in view in this treatise the moral training of the Individual, the branch of the Science of Society which we call Ethics Proper, bearing the same relation to the larger Science as the hewing and squaring of the stones to the building of the Temple, or the drill of the Recruit to the manœuvres of the field. Greek Philosophy viewed men principally as constituent parts of a, considering this function to be the real End of each, and this state as that in which the Individual attained highest and most complete development.

The third sense is “The detail of Civil Government,” which Aristotle expressly states (vi. 8) was the most common acceptation of the term.  . Matters of which a man is to judge either belong to some definite art or science, or they do not. In the former case he is the best judge who has thorough acquaintance with that art or science, in the latter, the man whose powers have been developed and matured by education. A lame horse one would show to a farrier, not to the best and wisest man of one’s acquaintance: to the latter one would apply in a difficult case of conduct.

Experience answers to the first, a state of self-control to the latter.  . In the last chapter of the third book of this treatise it is said of the fool, that his desire of pleasure is not only insatiable, but indiscriminate in its objects,.  .  is a word used in this treatise in various significations.

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