PREFACE

Summary

The first of the two volumes which I now publish is an introductory volume designed to throw light on the political teaching of Aristotle. I have sought to view his political teaching in connexion not only with the central principles of his philosophical system, but also with the results of earlier speculation. I have endeavoured to discover how it came to be what it is, and especially to trace its relation to the political teaching of Plato, and to ask how far the paths followed by the two inquirers lay together, how far and at what points they diverged. It is only thus that we can learn how much came to Aristotle by inheritance and how much is in a more especial sense his own. If the investigation of these questions has often carried me beyond the limits of the Politics, I have sought in recapitulating and illustrating Aristotle's political teaching to follow as far as possible in the track of its inquiries. It will be seen, however, that I have dealt in my First Volume with some books of the Politics at far greater length than with others. Thus, while I have analysed with some fulness the contents of the Third, Fourth, and Fifth Books (in the order which I have adopted) and have also had much to say with regard to the inquiries of the First, I have dwelt but little on the Second Book and have given only a short summary of the contents of the Sixth, Seventh, and Eighth.