we may give the impression of the whole in a smaller compass. We may be allowed, without violating any principle of criticism, to imagine how Aristotle would have rewritten or rearranged his subject, had our modern copies of the Politics fallen into his hands.

Many things become clearer to us when we are familiar with them. A sense of unity and power will often arise in the mind after long study of a writing which at first seemed poor and disappointing. Through the distinctions and other mannerisms of his school, the original thinker shines forth to any one who is capable of recognising him. Great ideas or forms of thought indicate a mind superior in power to the average understanding of the commentator or interpreter. We cannot be sure that any single sentence of the Politics proceeded from the pen of Aristotle, but this is no reason for doubting the genuineness of his works, if we take the term in a somewhat wider sense; for they all bear the impress of his personality. That which distinguishes him from Plato and the Neo-Platonists, from Isocrates and the rhetoricians, from the Stoics and Epicureans, from all Scholiasts and Commentators, is not the less certain because his writings have come down to us in a somewhat questionable shape. Even if they are the traditions of a school, the mind of the founder is reflected in them. The aim of the interpreter should be to simplify, to disentangle, to find the thought in the imperfect expression of it; as far as possible, to separate the earlier from the later elements, the true from the false Aristotle. The last, however, is a work of great nicety, in which we can only proceed on grounds of internal evidence and therefore cannot hope to attain any precise result. There may be said to be a petitio principiï even in making the attempt, for we can only judge of the genuine Aristotle from writings of which the genuineness is assumed.

Any mere translation of Aristotle's Politics will be, in many passages, necessarily obscure, because the connexion of ideas is not adequately represented by the sequence of words. If it were possible to present the course of thought in a perfectly smooth and continuous form, such an attempt would be too great a departure from the Greek. It is hoped that the Analysis or short paraphrase

which follows may assist the student in grasping the general meaning before he enters on a minute study of the text; and that the reflections which are interspersed may enable him to read Aristotle in the light of recent criticism and history, and to take a modern interest in it, without confusing the ancient and modern worlds of thought. (Compare, in vol. ii, Essays on the Style of Aristotle, and on the Structure of certain of the Aristotelian writings.)

BOOK I.

A criticism on Plato,—the origin of the household, village, state,— the nature of property and more especially of property in slaves,— the art of household management, and its relation to the art of money-making,-literature of the subject,—some further questions concerning the relations of master and slave, husband and wife, parent and child.

The great charm of the writings of Plato and Aristotle is that they are original. They contain the first thoughts of men respecting problems which will always continue to interest them. Their thoughts have become a part of our thoughts, and enter imperceptibly into the speculations of modern writers on the same subjects, but with a difference. The Ionian and Eleatic philosophers who preceded them were eclipsed in the brightness of their successors; they had not yet reached the stage of ethics or politics, and were little known to the ancients themselves. The ethical teaching of Socrates has been preserved and not been preserved; that is to say, it does not exist in any definite form or system. To us, therefore, Plato and Aristotle are the beginnings of philosophy. In reading them the reflection is often forced upon us: 'How little have we added except what has been gained by a greater experience of history!' Some things have come down to us with

'Better opinion, better confirmation :'

they have acquired authority from age and use. But there are other truths of ancient political philosophy which we have forgotten, or

which have degenerated into truisms. Like the memories of childhood they are easily revived, and there is no form in which they so naturally come back to us as that in which they were first presented to mankind.

For example, during the last century enlightened philosophers have been fond of repeating that the state is only a machine for the protection of life and property. But the ancients taught a nobler lesson, that ethics and politics are inseparable; that we must not do evil in order to gain power; and that the justice of the state and the justice of the individual are the same. The older lesson has survived; the newer is seen to have only a partial and relative truth. So for the liberty, equality, and fraternity of the French revolution we are beginning to substitute the idea of law and order; we acknowledge that the best form of government is that which is most permanent, and that the freedom of the individual when carried to an extreme is suicidal. But these are truths which may be found in Aristotle's Politics. Thus to the old we revert for some of our latest political lessons. The idealism of Plato is always returning upon us, as a dream of the future; the Politics of Aristotle continue to have a practical relation to our own times.

But while we are struck with the general similarity, we are almost equally struck by the different mode in which the thoughts of ancient and modern times are expressed. To go no further than the first book of the Politics, the method of Aristotle in his enquiry into the origin of the state is analytical rather than historical; that is to say, he builds up the state out of its elements, but does not enquire what history or pre-historic monuments tell about primitive man. He is very much under the influence of logical forms, such as means and ends, final causes, categories of quantity and quality, the antithesis of custom and nature, and other verbal oppositions, which not only express, but also dominate his meaning. The antagonism to Plato is constantly reappearing, and may be traced where the name of Plato is not mentioned; the rivalry of the two schools never dies out. The sciences are not yet accurately divided; and hence some questions, which present no difficulty to us, such as the relation of the art of house

hold management to the art of money-making, are discussed at great length, and after all not clearly explained. Some good guesses are made about the nature of money, and some obvious fallacies remain undetected. The lending of money at a fair rate of interest is not distinguished from the usury which is so severely condemned. The universal custom of slavery presents a difficulty which Aristotle is unable to resolve on any clear or consistent principle. The tendency to pass from the absolute to the relative, or from a wider to a narrower point of view, as in the discussion respecting the slave and the artizan, the good citizen and the good man, the art of money-making, the perfect state, is another element of confusion. The connection is often tortuous and unnatural. It would seem as if notes had been parenthetically inserted in the rough draft of the argument; and here and there considerable dislocations of the text may be suspected. There are favourite topics to which Aristotle is always returning; such, for example, as the Lacedaemonian constitution, which, like the constitution of Great Britain or of the United States, was a powerful idea, and exercised a great influence on the speculations of philosophers, as well as on the laws and customs of cities and peoples.

In the Politics as well as in Aristotle's other works, there are many indications that he was writing in an age of controversy, and surrounded by a voluminous literature. Had all the books which were written come down to us they would not have been scanned with the same minuteness, and they might perhaps have been studied in a larger and more liberal spirit. The excessive value set upon a small portion of them, and the fragmentary form in which they have been preserved, has given an extraordinary stimulus to the art of interpretation and criticism. Had there been more of them we should have seen them in truer proportions. We should not have spent so much time in deciphering them, and possibly they might not have exerted an equal influence over us. For the study of the classics has become inseparable from the critical method, which enters so largely into the mind of the nineteenth century. But this is a part of a great subject, which it would be out of place here to discuss further.

Every community aims at some good, and the state, which is the c. 1. highest community, at the highest good. But of communities there are many kinds. And they who [like Plato and Xenophon] suppose that the king and householder differ only in the number of their subjects, or that a statesman is only a king taking his turn of rule, are mistaken. The difference is one of kind and not of degree, as we shall more clearly see, if, following our accustomed method, we resolve the whole into its parts or elements. For in order to understand the nature of things, we must inquire into their origin.

Now the state is founded upon two relations; 1) that of male and c. 2. female; 2) that of master and servant; the first necessary for the continuance of the race; the second for the preservation of the inferior class or of both classes. From these two relations there arises, in the first place, the household, intended by nature for the supply of men's daily wants; secondly, the village, which is an aggregate of households; and finally, the state. The parent or elder was the king of the family, and so when families were combined in the village, the patriarchal or kingly form of government continued. The village was a larger family. When several villages were united, the state came into existence. Like the family or household, it originated in necessity, but went beyond them and was the end and fulfilment of them. For nature makes nothing in vain; and to man alone among the animals she has given the faculty of speech, that he may discourse with his fellows of the expedient and the just; and these are the ideas which lie at the basis of the state. In the order of time, the state is later than the family or the individual, but in the order of nature, prior to them; for the whole is prior to the part. As there could be no foot or hand without the body, so there could be no family or man, in the proper sense of the words, without the state. For when separated from his fellows, man is no longer man; he is either a god or a beast. There is a social instinct in all of us, but it requires to be developed; and he who by the help of this instinct organized the state, was the greatest of benefactors. For man, when perfected by law and justice, is the best,—when estranged from them, the worst of animals.

But before we enquire into the state, we must enquire into the c. 3. household. In a complete household there are three relations: