If this be accepted, it would seem that a Translator may fairly wish to direct, though not to deprecate, criticism, by stating what end he has borne 1n view. My object then, in the present work, is to assist two classes of Students — those to whom the text itself of the Ethics presents difficulties, and those who may need an interpreter of its meaning. To effect the first of these purposes, I have endeavoured to translate closely, Without merely construing. With a view to the second, I have attempted so to translate, that each passage should commit itself to some definite view of the meaning of the original. For the sake of simplicity, I have, as far as possible, rendered the Greek terms always by the same English ones, conceiving that what might be lost in elegance would be more than compensated by clearness and intelligibleness. I have assumed throughout, that the original work is of a colloquial, not stifi and formal, character.