PREFACE. THE text of this edition of what, in deference to tradition, I have called on the title-page the Fifth Book of the Nicomachean Ethics, is founded upon a new collation of eight MSS. I cannot pretend that my researches in this direction have yielded much that is important. They have indeed enabled me to correct a few oversights in Bekker's text and critical notes, but they have thrown little light, if any, upon the difficulties of the treatise, and have convinced me that Bekker lost little by confining his attention to the four MSS. KLMO. I have how ever printed the results of my collation, in the hope that others may thereby be spared the repetition of an ungrateful labour. Thinking, as many others have done, that the several parts of the Fifth Book do not stand in their proper order, I have with some hesitation adopted what seems to me a more intelligible arrangement than that of the received text. The chapter “On Dislocations in the Text", which forms a part of the Introduction, is based upon an article which I contributed to the Journal of Philology in 1875. |