Aristotle is so firmly resolved not to let himself be entangled in the problem of the basic principle of ethics, that he will allow nothing to lead him to the discussion of it. He means to voyage along the coast, keep to facts, and deal with ethics as if they were a branch of natural science. Only he forgets that in science we can confine ourselves to venturing from definite given happenings through hypotheses to the nature of the Being which lies behind them, while in ethics, on the contrary, we have to establish a basic principle through the application of which we secure our happenings. It is because he misunderstands their nature that Aristotle cannot help ethics forward. Plato rides off over the head of Socrates and loses himself in abstractions. Aristotle, in order to maintain the connexion with reality goes down below Socrates. He brings together material for a monumental building, and runs up a wooden shack. Among teachers of virtue he is one of the greatest. Nevertheless, the least of those who venture on the search for the basic principle of the ethical, is greater than he. [pg 047] Ethical theory is no more ethics than cartilage is bone. But how strange is this inability to establish the basic principle of ethical action which Socrates regarded as the certain, and from the very first sure and certain, product of thoughtful reflexion on the ethical! Why do all the ancient thinkers who in succession to Socrates search for it, always miss it? Why does Aristotle cease to concern himself with it, and so condemn himself to a doctrine of virtue in which, as a matter of fact, there is hardly any more living ethical force than there is in the abstract ethical system of Plato or in the ethics of resignation of the rest? The Ideal of the Civilized State in Plato and Aristotle How little Plato and Aristotle are capable of establishing an ethic of action can be seen from the way in which they sketch their ideal of the civilized State. Plato develops his in the _Republic_, Aristotle his in the _Politics_. At this very time, Mencius (Meng-tse) is putting before the princes of China a doctrine of the civilized State. That the State must be something more than a union which regulates in the most practical way the common life of a number of persons whom natural conditions compel to depend upon one another, is quite clear to both of them. They also agree in demanding that the State shall promote the true prosperity of its citizens. This is, however, unthinkable and impossible without virtue, and the State must therefore develop into an ethical institution. “Honourable and virtuous conduct is the object which the political community aims at,” is the way Aristotle puts it.