In the concluding chapter, Aristotle gives the transition from Ethics to Politics. Treatises on virtue may inspire a few liberal minds; but, for the mass of men, laws, institutions, and education are necessary. The young ought to be trained, not merely by paternal guidance directing in the earliest years their love and hatred, but also by a scheme of public education, prescribed and enforced by authority throughout the city. Right conduct will thus be rendered easier by habit; but still, throughout life, the mature citizen must continue under the discipline of law, which has force adequate to correction, and, being impersonal, does not excite aversion and hatred. Hence the need for a system of good public training. Nowhere is this now established and enforced; hardly anywhere, except in Sparta, is it even attempted. Amid such public neglect, it becomes the duty of an individual to contribute what he can to the improvement of those that he is concerned in, and for that purpose to acquire the capacities qualifying him for becoming a lawgiver. Private admonition will compensate to a certain extent for the neglect of public interference, and in particular cases may be even more discriminating. Bat how are such capacities to be acquired? Not from the Sophists, whose method is too empirical; nor from practical politicians, for they seem to have no power of imparting their skill. Perhaps it would be useful to make a collection of existing laws and constitutions. Aristotle concludes with sketching the plan of his own work on Politics.
The Aristotelian doctrines are generally summed up in such points as these:--The theory of Good; Pleasure; the theory of Virtue; the doctrine of the Will, distinguishing voluntary from involuntary; Virtue a Habit; the doctrine of the MEAN; the distinction between the Moral Virtues and the Intellectual Virtues; Justice, distributive, and commutative; Friendship; the Contemplative Life.
The following are the indications of his views, according to the six leading subjects of Ethics.
I. and II.--It is characteristic of Aristotle (as is fully stated in Appendix B.) to make the judgment of the wisest and most cultivated minds, the standard of appeal in moral questions. He lays down certain general principles, such as the doctrine of the Mean, but in the application of these (which is everything), he trusts to the most experienced and skilled advisers that the community can furnish.