Aristotle writes: "He that acts by intelligence and cultivates
understanding, is likely to be best disposed and dearest to God. For
if, as is thought, there is any care of human things on the part of
the heavenly powers, we may reasonably expect them to delight in that
which is best and most akin to themselves, that is, in intelligence,
and to make a return of good to such as supremely love and honour
intelligence, as cultivating the thing dearest to Heaven, and so
behaving rightly and well. Such, plainly, is the behaviour of the
wise. The wise man therefore is the dearest to God" (Nic. Eth. X. ix.
13). But Aristotle does not work out the connexion between God and His
law on the one hand and human conscience and duty on the other. In
that direction the Stoics, and after them the Roman Jurists, went
further than Aristotle. By reason of this deficiency, Aristotle,
peerless as he is in Ethics, remains an imperfect Moral Philosopher.



PREFACE TO THE FOURTH EDITION (1918)

1. I have altered the opening pages in accordance with the Preface to
the edition of 1905.

2. I have added a paragraph on Syndicalism (pp. 291-2).

3. Also a new Table of _Addenda et Corrigenda_, and a new Index.

The quotations from St. Thomas may be read in English, nearly all of
them, in the Author's _Aquinas Ethicus_, 2 vols.; 12s. (Burns and
Oates.)