Notes on this Nicomachean Ethics of Aristotle. By J. A.
Stewart. 2 vols. (The Clarendon Press.)—There is something eminently businesslike about this work. Mr. Stewart does not spend any time or space on introductory essays, which are often more adapted to show the writer's cleverness than to help the student, but plunges into his work at once. "Junior students," he writes in his brief preface, "can master the ethics only by fighting their way through the problems and difficulties of the treatise as these start up-
someti Ms for the first time, sometimes again under altered forms— in the a reek text." This Greek text, then, he carefully examines, interpreting it, after the usual grammatical considerations, by a
comparison with the other Aristotelian writings. It is here that Mr. Stewart—who, we should say, is an Oxford tutor—compares favourably with the Oxford teachers of fifty years ago. These had, for the most part, little or no acquaintance with any of the Aristotelian writings outside the narrow limits of academical requirements. Nothing more, indeed, could be expected when two or three men had to divide between them the whole range of classical teaching. Thanks to the specialising movement in Oxford teaching, things are vastly improved. This work of Mr. Stewart is one of the most valuable outcomes of tha new or her of things.
He modestly describes his work as " Notes," but it must not be supposed that his commentary is at all dry or jejune. Many highly interesting questions in morals are discussed briefly, but in a practical way. We could not desire to give an inquirer a better specimen of thoroughly good Oxford work on the philosophical side than may be found in these two volumes.
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