[The Yashts resemble closely the prayers of the Yasnas and the Vispereds, differing only in this, that each one of the twenty-four extant is devoted to the traits of a single deity, or at least of one class of divine beings (the bountiful immortals, and so forth). The usual word in the Yashts for the superhuman beings at rest is Yazads.] YASHT I. The names of Ahura-Mazda and their efficacy. Asked Zarathustra, "What, O Most High, are the most effective counter-charms (mantras) against evil spirits?" He received for answer that the pronunciation of the twenty different names of Ahura-Mazda are the best and strongest spells. These are the following:--1. The Revealer. 2. The Herd-giver, etc., etc. The twentieth and last is Mazda, the All-knowing One. * * * * * _PHILOSOPHY_ * * * * * ARISTOTLE THE ETHICS OF ARISTOTLE Aristotle was born at Stagira, a Greek colony on the Macedonian frontier, in 384 B.C., when Plato was forty-three, fifteen years after the death of Socrates. Going to Athens, he became one of Plato's pupils in philosophy at the age of twenty. In 342 he became tutor to the future Alexander the Great, and some years later opened, again at Athens, his own school, whose 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.