the capacities qualifying him for becoming a lawgiver.  Private admonition will compensate to a certain extent for the neglect of public interference, and in particular cases may be even more discriminating.  Bat how are such capacities to be acquired?  Not from the Sophists, whose method is too empirical; nor from practical politicians, for they seem to have no power of imparting their skill.  Perhaps it would be useful to make a collection of existing laws and constitutions.  Aristotle concludes with sketching the plan of his own work on Politics.

* * * * *

The Aristotelian doctrines are generally summed up in such points as these:—­The theory of Good; Pleasure; the theory of Virtue; the doctrine of the Will, distinguishing voluntary from involuntary; Virtue a Habit; the doctrine of the MEAN; the distinction between the Moral Virtues and the Intellectual Virtues; Justice, distributive, and commutative; Friendship; the Contemplative Life.

The following are the indications of his views, according to the six leading subjects of Ethics.

I. and II.—­It is characteristic of Aristotle (as is fully stated in Appendix B.) to make the judgment of the wisest and most cultivated minds, the standard of appeal in moral questions.  He lays down certain general principles, such as the doctrine of the Mean, but in the application of these (which is everything), he trusts to the most experienced and skilled advisers that the community can furnish.

III.—­On the theory of Happiness, or the Summum Bonum, it is needless to repeat the abstract of the tenth book.

IV.—­In laying down the Moral Code, he was encumbered with the too wide view of Virtue; but made an advance in distinguishing virtue proper from excellence in general.

V.—­He made Society tutelary to the individual in an excessive degree.  He had no clear conception of the province of authority or law; and did not separate the morality of obligation from the morality of reward and nobleness.

VI.—­His exclusion of Theology from morality was total.

THE STOICS.

The Stoics were one of the four sects of philosophy, recognized and conspicuous at Athens during the three centuries preceding the Christian era, and during the century or more following.  Among these four sects, the most marked antithesis of ethical dogma was between the Stoics and the Epicureans.  The Stoical system dates from about 300 B.C.; it was derived from the system of the Cynics.

The founder of the system was ZENO, from Citium in Cyprus (he lived from 340—­260 B.C.), who derived his first impulse from Krates the Cynic.  He opened his school in a building or porch, called the Stoa Poecile (’Painted Portico’) at Athens, whence the origin of the name of the sect.  Zeno had for his disciple CLEANTHES, from Assos in the Troad (300—­220 B.C.), whose Hymn to Jupiter is the only fragment of any length