subject-matter of conduct to a few simple rigorous abstract principles,
with conclusions necessarily issuing from them, and the view that it is
the field of operation of inscrutable forces acting without predictable
regularity. He does not pretend to find in it absolute uniformities, or
to deduce the details from his principles. Hence, too, he insists on the
necessity of experience as the source or test of all that he has to
say. Moral experience--the actual possession and exercise of good
character--is necessary truly to understand moral principles and
profitably to apply them. The mere intellectual apprehension of them is
not possible, or if possible, profitless.

The _Ethics_ is addressed to students who are presumed both to have
enough general education to appreciate these points, and also to have a
solid foundation of good habits. More than that is not required for the
profitable study of it.

If the discussion of the nature and formation of character be regarded
as the central topic of the _Ethics_, the contents of Book I., cc.
iv.-xii. may be considered as still belonging to the introduction and
setting, but these chapters contain matter of profound importance and
have exercised an enormous influence upon subsequent thought. They lay
down a principle which governs all Greek thought about human life, viz.
that it is only intelligible when viewed as directed towards some end or
good. This is the Greek way of expressing that all human life involves
an ideal element--something which it is not yet and which under certain
conditions it is to be. In that sense Greek Moral Philosophy is
essentially idealistic. Further it is always assumed that all human
practical activity is directed or "oriented" to a _single_ end, and that
that end is knowable or definable in advance of its realisation. To know
it is not merely a matter of speculative interest, it is of the highest