Introduction and translation

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Clarendon Press, 1885

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Page lxxiii - For as we have many members In one body, and all members have not the same office: So we, being many, are one body in Christ and every one members one of another.
Page 215 - Clearly then the best limit of the population of a state is the largest number which suffices for the purposes of life, and can be taken in at a single view.
Page 2 - In the first place ( 1 ) there must be a union of those who cannot exist without each other; for example, of male and female, that the race may continue; and this is a union which is formed, not of deliberate purpose, but because, in common with other animals and with plants, mankind have a natural desire to leave behind them an image of themselves.
Page 4 - Hence it is evident that the state is a creation of nature, and that man is by nature a political animal. And he who by nature and not by mere accident is without a state, is either above humanity, or below it; he is the Tribeless, lawless, hearthless one...
Page 3 - When several villages are united in a single complete community, large enough to be nearly or quite selfsufficing, the state comes into existence, originating in the bare needs of life, and continuing in existence for the sake of a good life.
Page 248 - With a like view they may be taught drawing, not to prevent their making mistakes in their own purchases, or in order that they may not be imposed upon in the buying or selling of articles, but perhaps rather because it makes them judges of the beauty of the human form. To be always seeking after the useful does not become free and exalted souls.
Page 117 - A fifth form of democracy, in other respects the same, is that in which, not the law, but the multitude, have the supreme power, and supersede the law by their decrees. This is a state of affairs brought about by the demagogues. For in democracies which are subject to the law the best citizens hold the first place, and there are no demagogues ; but where the laws are not supreme, there demagogues spring up. For the people becomes a monarch, and is many in one ; and the many have the power in their...
Page 9 - But this does not hold universally: for some slaves have the souls and others have the bodies of freemen. And doubtless if men differed from one another in the mere forms of their bodies as much as the statues of the Gods do from men, all would acknowledge that the inferior class should be slaves of the superior.
Page 128 - ... than both the other classes, or at any rate than either singly; for the addition of the middle class turns the scale, and prevents either of the extremes from being dominant. Great then is the good fortune of a State in which the citizens have a moderate and sufficient property ; for where some possess much, and the others nothing, there may arise an extreme democracy, or a pure oligarchy ; or a tyranny may grow out of either extreme...
Page 4 - ... the power of speech is intended to set forth the expedient and inexpedient, and therefore likewise the just and the unjust. And it is a characteristic of man that he alone has any sense of good and evil, of just and unjust, and the like, and the association of living beings who have this sense makes a family and a state.

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