c. 12.

Hellas. These offices were without salary, and therefore those who bought them must have repaid themselves in other ways (§ 12).

The permanence of the Carthaginian government is to Aristotle the most striking feature of it. To Carthage, as to England, emigration was the great safeguard against political dangers. Aristotle seems to think that such a remedy is an evasion of the duties of the legislator. He strongly insists that there should be a constitutional or legal method of reforming abuses; this did not exist either in Crete or Carthage. As in some modern European states, revolution or assassination was the only remedy for them.

The defect of knowledge derived from other sources renders it difficult to form a judgement upon Aristotle's account of Carthage or even to reconcile him with himself. We cannot venture to connect his statements with the later but still scanty accounts of Carthage which have been preserved by the Romans. Nor can we correct the inaccurate statements of later writers by comparing them with one another. We do not know of whom the assembly was composed at Carthage, nor whether the council of 100 is or is not the same as the council of 104, or in what sense Carthage had or had not an exemption from revolution, or how far the club dinners may have corresponded to the Syssitia of Sparta, or whether offices were put up for sale to the highest bidder absolutely without regard to his fitness for office. To raise conjectures about these and similar uncertainties, to say what may have been or might have been, in an unknown age or country, to find reasons plentiful as blackberries' for one hypothesis or another, is not to make a contribution to history, and tends rather to impair the clearness of the critical vision.

Political writers have been either private individuals or lawgivers. Of lawgivers some have framed constitutions, others have only made laws. Lycurgus and Solon did both. Of the Lacedaemonian constitution I have already spoken. There have been various opinions concerning the legislation of Solon. 1) He is thought to have produced a mixed constitution, but he did not-the addition of dicasteries appointed out of the whole people does not make the

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constitution mixed, and this was the only element due to Solon, for the Areopagus and the elected magistracies existed before his time. 2) He is thought to have created the democracy; but he did nothing of the kind. The power of the people began to increase after the Persian war, and was extended by Ephialtes and Pericles, who paid the jurors and curtailed the power of the Areopagus, as well as by other demagogues who succeeded them. Incidentally the institution of the law-courts led to the creation of the democracy. But Solon neither intended nor foresaw this result. He only gave the people a voice in the election and control of the magistrates, who continued to be taken from the three higher classes of citizens.

Zaleucus and Charondas were only legislators. Zaleucus legislated for the Italian Locrians, Charondas for the Chalcidian cities of Italy and Sicily. The latter was the first who instituted actions for perjury; he is very precise in the form of his laws. Onomacritus is thought to have been even older than these; and to have been contemporary with Thales, of whom Lycurgus and Zaleucus are supposed to have been disciples; but all this is an anachronism. Philolaus, a Corinthian, who settled at Thebes, enacted Laws of Adoption;' Phaleas would have equalised property. Some peculiarities of Plato's legislation are the community of women and property, the common meals of women, the law that the sober should be rulers of the feast, and the training of soldiers to acquire equal skill with both hands. Draco's laws are proverbial for severity. Pittacus was merciless to drunkards. Androdamas of Rhegium legislated for the Thracian Chalcidians.

The fragmentary chapter which concludes the Book and which is in part a repetition of what has preceded, contains an interesting criticism on Solon and Pericles. Aristotle (?) defends Solon against the charge of having introduced democracy. Although he admits. that there was a seed of democracy in some of the institutions of Solon, he attributes the real growth of it to the course of events, especially to the increased power deservedly gained by the people after the great sacrifices which they made in the Persian War. Ephialtes, Pericles, and other demagogues, for in this class by

implication he places them, gave too much encouragement to the democratic spirit, until Athens became what it was in later Greek history. (See also note on Text, p. 100.)

It may be observed that the writer is not quite consistent in his account of Solon; for he says, first of all, that he only introduced the dicasteries, and in a subsequent sentence that 'he only gave the people power to elect and control their magistrates.' How are these two statements to be reconciled with one another? He denies that Pericles [directly] created the democracy, but he admits that he did so indirectly by appointing the courts of law from all the citizens. It may be remarked also that he recapitulates what he had said about Phaleas without alluding to the previous discussion of him.

There is little or nothing in this chapter which need make us doubt its genuineness, that is to say, the degree of genuineness which we attribute to the rest of the Politics.

The writer seems rather strangely to suppose that in these few chapters he has told all that was worth telling either about the theories of philosophers or about ancient legislators. There are many matters of interest concerning which he is silent. But the beginnings of ancient criticism are fragmentary and always fall short of our wishes and expectations.

THE question whether the virtue of the good citizen is the same as that of the good man' with which the third Book opens, is Aristotle's way of discussing what is the relation of Ethics to Politics. The modern aspect of the question will be further considered in an Essay (Vol. II) on Aristotle as a Political Philosopher. (See also Note at end of Book III.)

A science which is not yet fully established must proceed tentatively in the use of words. It has to take them from poetry or common life and to set a new stamp upon them. A special meaning has to be elicited from a generic word or a new idea to be expressed through the medium of an outward object.

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Figures of speech are brought into use which gradually cease to be figurative. Abstract ideas have often to be explained by the concrete terms which correspond to them. It is easier to answer the question 'Who is a man?' than 'What is the true idea of human nature?' But these again, however familiar they may be, are perplexing when we attempt to define them. The specific use of words easily returns into the generic; the good sense passes into the neutral, or even into the bad; and what ought to be is confounded with what is. Many meanings grow out of the one (e. g. moreía). Even the material substance and the idea associated with it are not always distinguished. Such variations in the use of words often occur in the same page. Hence we are not surprised that Aristotle, before enquiring into the nature of the state, should begin by asking, Who is a citizen?' or that the first and popular use of the words 'citizen' or 'office' should require to be modified under different forms of government: or that the term 'polity' should in the same paragraph or sentence be used to signify a constitution' both in the more general and the more precise sense, or that the word 'city' should mean a 'town' and also a 'state.'

In ancient philosophy as well as in modern, and in the beginning quite as much as in the decline of either, there arose casuistical questions which often did not admit of a precise answer, although the attempt to solve them may have contributed to the growth of ethical and political science. 'Is a citizen de facto also a citizen de jure?' 'What constitutes a state?' Should obligations incurred by one government be discharged by another?' 'Is the one best man to be a king or an exile?' Aristotle is fond of raising such questions, which he sometimes cuts short by common sense and sometimes leaves without an answer. He exaggerates conflicting points of view, and also reconciles them. The art of dialectic had not yet attained to a system, but moved forward with irregular steps. Yet by the raising of objections and the contrast of opposites a real progress was made, and a higher stage of truth attained.

c. 1.

c. 2.

BOOK III.

The definition of a citizen and of a state: several casuistical questions, of which the most important is, Whether the virtue of the good citizen is the same as that of the good man: the definition of a polity: true forms of polity and their perversions: should the few or the many or the virtuous be supreme? recapitulation: the five species of kingship.

'What is a state?' is the first question which the political philosopher has to determine. But a state is composed of citizens, and therefore we must further ask, 'Who is a citizen?'-Not he who lives in a particular spot, or who has the privilege of suing and being sued (for these rights are not confined to citizens); nor yet one who is either too young or too old for office, or who is disfranchised, or an exile, or a metic; but he who actually shares in the administration of justice and in offices of state. And whereas offices are either limited by time, like special magistracies, or unlimited, like the office of dicast and ecclesiast, we are here speaking of the latter only, and we want to find some common term under which both dicast and ecclesiast are included. Such

a term is a holder of 'indefinite or unlimited office :'-those who share in office unlimited by time are citizens.

But since governments differ in kind and have a different place in the order of thought (for true forms are prior to perversions), the definition of the citizen will likewise differ in different states; and the definition which we have just given, strictly speaking, is suited only to a democracy. In aristocratic states like Lacedaemon and Carthage, which have no regular meetings of the ecclesia, the chief power is in the hands of the magistrates who decide all causes; and they are holders not of indefinite, but of definite offices. The words of our definition therefore, if they are to include aristocracies as well as democracies, will have to be amended: and we must say, That he is a citizen who shares in the judicial or deliberative administration of a state.

In practice, a citizen is defined to be one of whom both the parents, or, as others say, the grandparents or great grandparents