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THE GREEK PHILOSOPHY.433Wickedness is with Aristotle the impotence to holdthe mean between too much and too little*: it pre-sents itself therefore only in this world of contingencyand change, and has no relation to God,since the first or absolute good has nothing op-posed to it. He has not the sense of moral perversionwith regard o to evil. In accordance withwhich the end of all moral activity with him isdness, which consists in the well-being arisingfrom an energy according to nature; as virtueis the observing a proper mean between two extremes.And the highest happiness is contemplativethought, the function of the divine in man,the turning away from everything external to theinner world of the conceptions.The religious character, which belongs conspicuouslyto Plato's philosophy, fails, it will beseen, in that of Aristotle. Whereas Plato stroveto purify the popular belief, and urged as thehighest point of virtue to become like to God bythe conjunction of justice and sanctity with prudence,8Aristotle divides morality from religion ashis God is separated off from the world.9 Hisscientific inquiries have not that immediate rela-tion to the personalife and the destiny of man inwhich the religiousness of Platonism most consists.His whole view of the world goes to explain things8 Alb Kal ireiuffdeu eV0eV5e/ceure0e'p Kara rb ^uvar6v 6/ucnWjs Se Sinuiov Kal oaiov juera (ppovfoewsK. r. A. Theatet. p. 17G. » Zellev, vol. ii. part 2, p. 623.II.