distinction or separation, and all thinking about it which presupposes the finality of this distinction wanders into misconception and error. The thinking which really matters in conduct is not a thinking which imaginatively forecasts ideals which promise to fulfil desire, or calculates means to their attainment—that is sometimes useful, sometimes harmful, and always subordinate, but thinking which reveals to the agent the situation in which he is to act, both, that is, the universal situation on which as man he always and everywhere stands, and the ever-varying and ever-novel situation in which he as this individual, here and now, finds himself. In such knowledge of given or historic fact lie the natural determinants of his conduct, in such knowledge alone lies the condition of his freedom and his good.
But this does not mean that Moral Philosophy has not still much to learn from Aristotle's Ethics. The work still remains one of the best introductions to a study of its important subject-matter; it spreads before us a view of the relevant facts, it reduces them to manageable compass and order, it raises some of the central problems, and makes acute and valuable suggestions towards their solution. Above all, it perpetually incites to renewed and independent reflection upon them.
The following is a list of the works of Aristotle:—
- First edition of works (with omission of Rhetorica, Poetica, and second book of Œconomica), 5 vols. by Aldus Manutius, Venice, 1495–8; Grynaeus (including Rhetorica and Poetica), 1531, 1539, revised 1550; later editions were followed by that of Immanuel Bekker and Brandis (Greek and Latin), 5 vols. The 5th vol. contains the Index by Bonitz 1831–70; Didot edition (Greek and Latin), 5 vols. 1848–74.
- English Translations: Edited by T. Taylor, with Porphyry's Introduction, 9 vols., 1812; under editorship of J. A. Smith and W. D. Ross, 11 vols., 1908–31; Loeb editions: Ethica, Rhetorica, Poetica, Physica, Politica, Metaphysica, 1926–33.
- Later editions of separate works:
- De Anima: Torstrik, 1862; Trendelenburg, 2nd edition, 1877; with English translation, E. Wallace, 1882; Biehl, 1884, 1896; with English, R. D. Hicks, 1907.
