CHAPTER V.
Aristotle’s ‘Ethics.’
Aristotle’s treatise on Morals has come down to us entitled ‘Nicomachean Ethics.’ This label was probably affixed to the work on account of Nicomachus, the son of Aristotle, having had some subordinate connection with it, either as scribe or editor; and in order to distinguish it in the Peripatetic library from the ‘Eudemian Ethics,’ which is a sort of paraphrase of Aristotle’s treatise by his disciple Eudemus,—and from the ‘Great Ethics’ which is a restatement of the same matter by some later Peripatetic hand. Among the Works of Aristotle there is also included a little tract ‘On Virtues and Vices.’ This is a mere paper, such as the Peripatetic school used to produce, noting characteristics of some of the Aristotelian good qualities and their opposites, and with no pretensions to be considered genuine.
After going through, under the guidance of Aristotle, the theory of the reasonings by which knowledge is obtained, and the theory of the statement by which knowledge may be best set forth, we now enter, in
