for the necessary complement to the _Ethics, i.e._, a treatise devoted
to the questions which centre round the enquiry; by what organisation
of social or political forces, by what laws or institutions can we best
secure the greatest amount of good character?

We must, however, remember that the production of good character is not
the end of either individual or state action: that is the aim of the one
and the other because good character is the indispensable condition and
chief determinant of happiness, itself the goal of all human doing. The
end of all action, individual or collective, is the greatest happiness
of the greatest number. There is, Aristotle insists, no difference of
kind between the good of one and the good of many or all. The sole
difference is one of amount or scale. This does not mean simply that the
State exists to secure in larger measure the objects of degree which the
isolated individual attempts, but is too feeble, to secure without it.
On the contrary, it rather insists that whatever goods society alone
enables a man to secure have always had to the individual--whether he
realised it or not--the value which, when so secured, he recognises them
to possess. The best and happiest life for the individual is that which
the State renders possible, and this it does mainly by revealing to him
the value of new objects of desire and educating him to appreciate them.
To Aristotle or to Plato the State is, above all, a large and powerful
educative agency which gives the individual increased opportunities of
self-development and greater capacities for the enjoyment of life.

Looking forward, then, to the life of the State as that which aids
support, and combines the efforts of the individual to obtain happiness,
Aristotle draws no hard and fast distinction between the spheres of
action of Man as individual and Man as citizen. Nor does the division of
his discussion into the _Ethics_ and the _Politics_ rest upon any such