82 
MEMOIR OF ARISTOTLE. 
(as may be truly said of his) that it contains nothing 
which a Christian may dispense with, and no pre- 
cept of life at variance with the Christian virtues. 
In this department, Aristotle has left three prin- 
cipal treatises, viz. 1st, The Nicomachean Ethics, in 
ten books, addressed to his son ; 2d, The Magna 
Moralia, in two books ; 3d, The Eudemian Ethics, 
in seven books, addressed to Eudemus ; besides a 
short popular tract on the Virtues and Vices. The 
first of these exhibits the most formal and complete 
development of his theory, and is the work on which 
his fame as a moral philosopher chiefly rests. The 
other treatises are illustrations of the same subjects, 
entertaining similar views, and sometimes expressed 
in the same language. 
In these writings, his primary aim is to investi- 
gate the law or philosophical principle, according to 
which human actions attain the good or happiness 
which is their object ; and which, as being the end 
really designed in all actions, whatever may be their 
immediate and particular object, is the great final cause 
of all. The doctrine of virtue, happiness, pleasure, 
friendship, justice, temperance, self-love, the affec- 
tions, the passions, the motives and effects of actions, 
are the important themes which he discusses. In 
these inquiries, he takes a safer guide than the 
fanciful speculations of the Greek schools concern- 
ing the chief good, which imagined that there was 
some quality of good, admitting of abstract disquisi- 
tions into its nature. Hence the superiority of his 
