 At the beginning of Book IV (1288b1–39), Aristotle offers a fourfold account of what the expertise regarding constitutions must encompass. As glossed by Eugene Garver (2011: 107), and drawing on standard Aristotelian terminology distinguishing formal from material causes, these include: “The first, ‘that which is best in the abstract’...orients politics around the end of politics, the best life. The second, the best relative to circumstances, starts with the material cause and organizes political inquiry around the best that can be made out of given material. The third, the best on a hypothesis, starts not from the true end of politics, but any posited end, and so looks for means and devices that will preserve any given constitution. The final inquiry, the search for ‘the form of constitution which is best suited to states in general,’ articulates a formal cause that can organize almost any material, any kind of people.” These four elements of expertise regarding constitution are not tidily segregated in different parts of the text; they are pursued variously, sometimes in combination, and draw on wider discussions of the nature of politics and the human good that are threaded throughout.