Notes

For this term, as here employed, our language contains no equivalent expression except an inconvenient paraphrase. There are three senses which it bears in this treatise: the first (in which it is here employed) is its strict etymological signfication “The science of Society,” and this includes everything which can bear at all upon the well-being of Man in his social capacity, “Quicquid agunt homines nostri est farrago libelli.” It is in this view that it is fairly denominated most commanding and inclusive. The second sense (in which it occurs next, just below) is “Moral Philosophy.” Aristotle explains the term in this sense in the Rhetoric (1 2) [Greek: hae peri ta aethae pragmateia aen dikaion esti prosagoreuen politikaen]. He has principally in view in this treatise the moral training of the Individual, the branch of the Science of Society which we call Ethics Proper, bearing the same relation to the larger Science as the hewing and squaring of the stones to the building of the Temple, or the drill of the Recruit to the manoeuvres of the field. Greek Philosophy viewed men principally as constituent parts of a [Greek: polis], considering this function to be the real End of each, and this state as that in which the Individual attained his highest and most complete development. The third sense is “The detail of Civil Government,” which Aristotle expressly states (vi.