  Albert’s concern with ethics as such is found in his two commentaries on Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics. The prologues to both these works reveal Albert’s original thoughts on some problems about the discipline of ethics. He wonders if ethics can be considered as a theoretical deductive science. He concludes that it can be so considered because the underlying causes of moral action (rationes morum) involve both necessary and universal principles, the conditions needed for a science according to the analysis of Aristotle that Albert  accepted.[18]  The rationes morum are contrasted by him to the mere appearance of moral  behaviour.[19]  Thus virtue can be discussed in abstraction from particular actions of individual human agents. The same is true of other ethical principles. However, Albert maintains that it is possible to refer to particular human acts as exemplifying relevant virtues and as such to include them in a scientific discussion of  ethics.[20]  Therefore, ethics is theoretical, even though the object of its theory is the practical.