ERRATA IN TRANSLATION

MENTIONED IN THE NOTES.

Page 77 (iii. 5, 9), for to deceive the inhabitants' read 'that the privileged class may deceive their fellow citizens'

Page (iii. 15, § 6), for 'A king must legislate' read There must be a legislator, whether you call him king or not'

Page 149 (v. 3, § 7) for having been cut to pieces' read after their army had been cut to pieces'

Ib. (ib. § 9) for 'Oreum' read ' Oreus'

INTRODUCTION.

THE writings of Aristotle are almost entirely wanting in the charm of style, and several of them cannot even be said to have the merit of clearness. In the Politics we are often unable to follow the drift of the argument; the frequent digressions and conflicting points of view which arise are troublesome and perplexing to us. We do not understand why the writer should again and again have repeated himself; why he should have made promises which he never fulfills; why he should be always referring to what has preceded, or to what follows. He sometimes crosses over from his own line of argument to that of his opponent; and then returns again without indicating that he has made a change of front. There are words and clauses which seem to be out of place; or at any rate not to be duly subordinated to the rest of the passage. No other work of genius is so irregular in structure as some of the Aristotelian writings. And yet this defect of form has not prevented their exercising the greatest influence on philosophy and literature; the half-understood words of Aristotle have become laws of thought to other ages.

With the causes of these peculiarities we are not at present concerned. The style of Aristotle runs up into the more general question of the manner in which his writings were compiled or have been transmitted to us. Are they the work of one or of many? Do they proceed from the hand or mind of a single writer, or are they the accumulations of the Peripatetic school? This is a question, like the controversy about the Homeric poems, which cannot be precisely answered. The original form of some of the Aristotelian writings will never be restored. We can hardly tell how or where they came into existence: how much is to be attributed to Aristotle, how much to his editors or followers,--whether

his first followers, such as Eudemus, or later editors, such as the Alexandrians, or Andronicus of Rhodes, or Tyrannion, the friend of Cicero. We cannot by the transposition of sentences make them clearer, nor by verbal conjecture remove small flaws in the reasoning, or inconsistencies in the use of words. The best manuscripts of the Ethics and Politics, though not of first-rate authority, are not much worse than the primary manuscripts of other Greek authors. The disease, if it is to be so regarded, lies deeper, and enters into the constitution of the work. The existing form of the Aristotelian writings is at least as old as the first or second century B. C.; it is in the main the Aristotle of Cicero, though he was also acquainted with other works passing under the name of Aristotle, such as the Dialogues, which are preserved to us only in fragments. If we go back in thought from that date to the time when they were first written down by the hand of Aristotle, or at which they passed from being a tradition of the school into a roll or book, we are unable to say in what manner or out of what elements, written or oral, they grew up or were compiled. We only know that several of them are unlike any other Greek book which has come down to us from antiquity. The long list of works attributed to Aristotle in the Catalogues also shows that the Aristotelian literature in the Alexandrian age was of an indefinite character, and admitted of being added to and altered.

But although we cannot rehabilitate or restore to their original state the Politics or the Nicomachean Ethics or the Metaphysics, we may throw them into a form which will make them easier and more intelligible to the modern reader. We may 1) present the argument stripped of digressions and additions; 2) we may bring out the important and throw into the background the unimportant points; 3) we may distinguish the two sides of the discussion, where they are not distinguished by the author; 4) we may supply missing links, and omit clumsy insertions; 5) we may take the general meaning without insisting too minutely on the connection. We cannot presume to say how Aristotle should or might have written; nor can we dream of reconstructing an original text which probably had no existence. But we may leave out the interlineations; we may make a difficult book easier;

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,— 3 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