disciples were called the Peripatetics.  He died in 322 B.C.  His works laid the systematic foundations of every science known in his time.  His various treatises on logic were comprised in the “Organon”; he dealt with psychology and metaphysics; with rhetoric and the principles of literary criticism.  He also systematised the natural sciences; and the two works here given, “the Ethics” and “Politics,” have profoundly influenced ethical and political thought from his own day to ours.  In particular, his classification of the virtues, and his doctrine that virtue lies in a “mean,” have dominated a vast amount of moral speculation.  The treatises as we know them are so crabbed and condensed in style as to give the impression that they are to a large extent not the finished works, but notes and summaries.

I.—­THE END OF LIFE AND THE MEANING OF VIRTUE

Every art and science, every action, has for its end some good, whether this be a form of activity or an actual product.  The ends of minor arts are only means to the ends of superior arts.  If there is one supreme end, this is The Good, inquiry into which belongs to the supreme Social Science [for which the Greek term is Politics].  The name given to this supreme good, the attainment of which is the object of Politics, is Happiness, good living, or welfare.

But Happiness itself is variously defined; some identify it with Pleasure, others with Honour—­the first a degrading, and the second an inadequate view.  Platonists find it in an abstract Idea of Good, a Universal which precludes particulars.  There is a great deal to be said against this doctrine, even as a question of logic or metaphysic; but apart from that, the theory is out of court, for the all sufficient reason that its practical value is nil—­knowledge of the great Universal Good in the abstract is of no practical use whatever in everyday life, which is a fundamental point for us.

If, then, there is a supreme dominating Good to be aimed at, what are the essential characteristics it must display?  The Good of all Goods, the Best, must be complete in itself, a consummation.  Whatsoever is a means to some end beyond fails so far of completeness; when we say that our end must be “complete,” it follows that it must always be an end, never a means.  It is not merely one amongst others of which it is the best, but the one in which all the others are summed up.  It is of itself quite sufficient for the individual, and that not merely in isolation, but as a member of society—­which it is his nature to be.

Let us then define Happiness as Man’s Work—­the performance of his function as man.  Everything has some specific function, the performance of which is its Good, and man, too, must have a specific function.  Now, this cannot be the kind of life which he shares with the vegetable or with the brute creation, therefore it must be the active life of his distinctive—­i.q., his rational—­part, exercised in accordance with the virtue or virtues which perfect it, and in his life as a whole, not merely at moments.