by Aristotle
Again, it is by no means easy for one man to superintend many things; he will have to appoint a number of subordinates, and what difference does it make [10] whether these subordinates always existed or were appointed by him because he needed them? If, as I said before, the good man has a right to rule because he is better, still two good men are better than one: this is the old saying,
two going together,
and the prayer of Agamemnon,
would that I had ten such counsellors! [15]
And even now there are magistrates, for example judges, who have authority to decide some matters which the law is unable to determine, since no one doubts that the law would command and decide in the best manner whatever it could. But some things can, and other things cannot, be comprehended under the law, and this is the origin of the vexed question whether the best law or the best man should rule. For [20] matters of detail about which men deliberate cannot be included in legislation. Nor does anyone deny that the decision of such matters must be left to man, but it is argued that there should be many judges, and not one only. For every ruler who has [25] been trained by the law judges well; and it would surely seem strange that a person should see better with two eyes, or hear better with two ears, or act better with two hands or feet, than many with many; indeed, it is already the practice of kings to make to themselves many eyes and ears and hands and feet. For they make [30] colleagues of those who are the friends of themselves and their governments. They must be friends of the monarch and of his government; if not his friends, they will not do what he wants; but friendship implies likeness and equality; and, therefore, if he thinks that his friends ought to rule, he must think that those who are equal to himself and like himself ought to rule equally with himself. These are the principal [35] controversies relating to monarchy.
17 · But may not all this be true in some cases and not in others? for there is by nature both a justice and an advantage appropriate to the rule of a master, another to kingly rule, another to constitutional rule; but there is none naturally [40] appropriate to tyranny, or to any other perverted form of government; for these come into being contrary to nature. Now, to judge at least from what has been said, [1288a1] it is manifest that, where men are alike and equal, it is neither expedient nor just that one man should be lord of all, whether there are laws, or whether there are no laws, but he himself is in the place of law. Neither should a good man be lord over good men, nor a bad man over bad; nor, even if he excels in excellence, should he [5] have a right to rule, unless in a particular case, at which I have already hinted, and to which I will once more recur. But first of all, I must determine what natures are suited for government by a king, and what for an aristocracy, and what for a constitutional government.
A people who are by nature capable of producing a race superior in the excellence needed for political rule are fitted for kingly government; and a people [10] submitting to be ruled as freemen by men whose excellence renders them capable of political command are adapted for an aristocracy: while the people who are suited for constitutional freedom are those among whom there naturally exists a warlike multitude. In the former case the multitude is capable of being ruled by men whose excellence is appropriate to political command; in the latter case the multitude is [15] able to rule and to obey in turn by a law which gives office to the well-to-do according to their desert. But when a whole family, or some individual, happens to be so pre-eminent in excellence as to surpass all others, then it is just that they should be the royal family and supreme over all, or that this one citizen should be king. For, as I said before, to give them authority is not only agreeable to that notion [20] of justice which the founders of all states, whether aristocratic, or oligarchical, or again democratic, are accustomed to put forward (for these all recognize the claim of superiority, although not the same superiority), but accords with the principle [25] already laid down. For surely it would not be right to kill, or ostracize, or exile such a person, or require that he should take his turn in being governed. The whole is naturally superior to the part, and he who has this pre-eminence is in the relation of a whole to a part. But if so, the only alternative is that he should have the supreme power, and that mankind should obey him, not in turn, but always. These are the [30] conclusions at which we arrive respecting kingship and its various forms, and this is the answer to the question, whether it is or is not advantageous to states, and to which, and how.
18 · We maintain that the true forms of government are three, and that the [35] best must be that which is administered by the best, and in which there is one man, or a whole family, or many persons, excelling all the others together in excellence, and both rulers and subjects are fitted, the one to rule, the others to be ruled, in such a manner as to attain the most desirable life. We showed at the commencement of our inquiry that the excellence of the good man is necessarily the same as the excellence of the citizen of the perfect state. Clearly then in the same manner, and by the same means through which a man becomes truly good, he will frame a state [1288b1] that is to be ruled by an aristocracy or by a king, and the same education and the same habits will be found to make a good man and a man fit to be a statesman or king.
Having arrived at these conclusions, we must proceed to speak of the perfect state, and describe how it comes into being and is established.
So if we are to inquire in the appropriate way about it, we must. . . . [5]
BOOK IV
1 · In all arts and sciences which embrace the whole of any subject, and do [10] not come into being in a fragmentary way, it is the province of a single art or science to consider all that appertains to a single subject. For example, the art of gymnastics considers not only the suitableness of different modes of training to different bodies, but what sort is the best (for the best must suit that which is by nature best and best [15] furnished with the means of life), and also what common form of training is adapted to the great majority of men. And if a man does not desire the best habit of body, or the greatest skill in gymnastics, which might be attained by him, still the trainer or the teacher of gymnastics should be able to impart any lower degree of either. The same principle equally holds in medicine and ship-building, and the making of [20] clothes, and in the arts generally.
Hence it is obvious that government too is the subject of a single science, which has to consider what government is best and of what sort it must be, to be most in accordance with our aspirations, if there were no external impediment, and also what kind of government is adapted to particular states. For the best is often unattainable, and therefore the true legislator and statesman ought to be acquainted [25], not only with that which is best in the abstract, but also with that which is best relatively to circumstances. We should be able further to say how a state may be constituted under any given conditions; both how it is originally formed and, when formed, how it may be longest preserved; the supposed state neither having the best [30] constitution nor being provided even with the conditions necessary for the best, nor being the best under the circumstances, but of an inferior type.
We ought, moreover, to know the form of government which is best suited to states in general; for political writers, although they have excellent ideas, are often [35] unpractical. We should consider, not only what form of government is best, but also what is possible and what is easily attainable by all. There are some who would have none but the most perfect; for this many natural advantages are required. Others, [40] again, speak of a more attainable form, and, although they reject the constitution under which they are living, they extol some one in particular, for example the Lacedaemonian. Any change of government which has to be introduced should be [1289a1] one which men, starting from their existing constitutions, will be both willing and able to adopt, since there is quite as much trouble in the reformation of an old constitution as in the establishment of a new one, just as to unlearn is as hard as to [5] learn. And therefore, in addition to the qualifications of the statesman already ment
ioned, he should be able to find remedies for the defects of existing constitutions, as has been said before. This he cannot do unless he knows how many forms of government there are. It is often supposed that there is only one kind of democracy and one of oligarchy. But this is a mistake; and, in order to avoid such mistakes, we [10] must ascertain what differences there are in the constitutions of states, and in how many ways they are combined. The same political insight will enable a man to know which laws are the best, and which are suited to different constitutions; for the laws are, and ought to be, framed with a view to the constitution, and not the constitution [15] to the laws. A constitution is the organization of offices in a state, and determines what is to be the governing body, and what is the end of each community. But laws are not to be confounded with the principles of the constitution; they are the rules according to which the magistrates should administer the state, and proceed against [20] offenders. So that we must know the varieties, and the number of varieties, of each form of government, if only with a view to making laws. For the same laws cannot be equally suited to all oligarchies or to all democracies, since there is certainly [25] more than one form both of democracy and of oligarchy.
2 · In our original discussion about governments we divided them into three true forms: kingly rule, aristocracy, and constitutional government, and three [30] corresponding perversions—tyranny, oligarchy, and democracy. Of kingly rule and of aristocracy we have already spoken, for the inquiry into the perfect state is the same thing as the discussion of the two forms thus named, since both imply a [35] principle of excellence provided with external means. We have already determined in what aristocracy and kingly rule differ from one another, and when the latter should be established. In what follows we have to describe the so-called constitutional government, which bears the common name of all constitutions, and the other forms, tyranny, oligarchy, and democracy.
It is obvious which of the three perversions is the worst, and which is the next in badness. That which is the perversion of the first and most divine is necessarily the [1289b1] worst. And just as a royal rule, if not a mere name, must exist by virtue of some great personal superiority in the king, so tyranny, which is the worst of governments, is necessarily the farthest removed from a well-constituted form; oligarchy is little better, for it is a long way from aristocracy, and democracy is the most tolerable of the three.
[5] A writer who preceded me has already made these distinctions, but his point of view is not the same as mine. For he lays down the principle that when all the constitutions are good (the oligarchy and the rest being virtuous), democracy is the worst, but the best when all are bad. Whereas we maintain that they are in any case [10] defective, and that one oligarchy is not to be accounted better than another, but only less bad.
Not to pursue this question further at present, let us begin by determining how many varieties of constitution there are (since of democracy and oligarchy there are [15] several); what constitution is the most generally acceptable, and what is preferable in the next degree after the perfect state; and besides this what other there is which is aristocratic and well-constituted, and at the same time adapted to states in general; and of the other forms of government we must ask to what people each is suited. For democracy may meet the needs of some better than oligarchy, and conversely. In the next place we have to consider in what manner a man ought to [20] proceed who desires to establish some one among these various forms, whether of democracy or of oligarchy; and lastly, having briefly discussed these subjects to the best of our power, we will endeavour to ascertain the modes of ruin and preservation both of constitutions generally and of each separately, and to what causes they are [25] to be attributed.
3 · The reason why there are many forms of government is that every state contains many elements. In the first place we see that all states are made up of families, and in the multitude of citizens there must be some rich and some poor, [30] and some in a middle condition; the rich possess heavy armour, and the poor not. Of the common people, some are farmers, and some traders, and some artisans. There are also among the notables differences of wealth and property—for example, in the number of horses which they keep, for they cannot afford to keep them unless they [35] are rich. And therefore in old times the cities whose strength lay in their cavalry were oligarchies, and they used cavalry in wars against their neighbours; as was the practice of the Eretrians and Chalcidians, and also of the Magnesians on the river Maeander, and of other peoples in Asia. Besides differences of wealth there are differences of rank and merit, and there are some other elements which were [1290a1] mentioned by us when in treating of aristocracy we enumerated the essentials of a state. Of these elements, sometimes all, sometimes the lesser, and sometimes the greater number, have a share in the government. It is evident then that there must [5] be many forms of government, differing in kind, since the parts of which they are composed differ from each other in kind. For a constitution is an organization of offices, which all the citizens distribute among themselves, according to the power which different classes possess (for example the rich or the poor), or according to [10] some principle of equality which includes both. There must therefore be as many forms of government as there are modes of arranging the offices, according to the superiorities and the differences of the parts of the state.
There are generally thought to be two principal forms: as men say of the winds that there are but two, north and south, and that the rest of them are only variations of these, so of governments there are said to be only two forms—democracy [15] and oligarchy. For aristocracy is considered to be a kind of oligarchy, as being the rule of a few, and the so-called constitutional government to be really a democracy, just as among the winds we make the west a variation of the north, and the east of the south wind. Similarly of musical modes there are said to be two kinds, [20] the Dorian and the Phrygian; the other arrangements of the scale are comprehended under one or other of these two. About forms of government this is a very favourite notion. But in either case the better and more exact way is to distinguish, as I have done, the one or two which are true forms, and to regard the others as [25] perversions, whether of the most perfectly attempered or of the best form of government: the more taut and more overpowering are oligarchical, and the more relaxed and gentler are democratic.
[30] 4 · It must not be assumed, as some are fond of saying, that democracy is simply that form of government in which the greater number are sovereign, for in oligarchies, and indeed in every government, the majority rules; nor again is oligarchy that form of government in which a few are sovereign. Suppose the whole [35] population of a city to be 1300, and that of these 1000 are rich, and do not allow the remaining 300 who are poor, but free, and in all other respects their equals, a share of the government—no one will say that this is a democracy. In like manner, if the poor were few and the masters of the rich who outnumber them, no one would ever call such a government, in which the rich majority have no share of office, an [1290b1] oligarchy. Therefore we should rather say that democracy is the form of government in which the free are rulers, and oligarchy in which the rich; it is only an accident that the free are the many and the rich are the few. Otherwise a government in which the offices were given according to stature, as is said to be the [5] case in Ethiopia, or according to beauty, would be an oligarchy; for the number of tall or good-looking men is small. And yet oligarchy and democracy are not sufficiently distinguished merely by these two characteristics of wealth and freedom. Both of them contain many other elements, and therefore we must carry our analysis further, and say that the government is not a democracy in which the [10] freemen, being few in number, rule over the many who are not free, as at Apollonia on the Ionian Gulf, and at Thera (for in each of these states the nobles, who were also the earliest settlers, held office, although they were but a few out of many). Neither is it a democracy when the rich have the government because they exceed [15] in number; as was the case formerly at Colophon, w
here the bulk of the inhabitants were possessed of large property before the Lydian War. But the form of government is a democracy when the free, who are also poor and the majority, govern, and an oligarchy when the rich and the noble govern, they being at the same [20] time few in number.
I have said that there are many forms of government, and have explained to what causes the variety is due. Why there are more than those already mentioned, and what they are, and whence they arise, I will now proceed to consider, starting from the principle already admitted, which is that every state consists, not of one, [25] but of many parts. If we were going to speak of the different species of animals, we should first of all determine the organs which are indispensable to every animal, as for example some organs of sense and the instruments of receiving and digesting food, such as the mouth and the stomach, besides organs of locomotion. Assuming now that there are only so many kinds of organs, but that there may be differences [30] in them—I mean different kinds of mouths, and stomachs, and perceptive and locomotive organs—the possible combinations of these differences will necessarily furnish many varieties of animals. (For animals cannot be the same which have different kinds of mouths or of ears.) And when all the combinations are exhausted, [35] there will be as many sorts of animals as there are combinations of the necessary organs. The same, then, is true of the forms of government which have been described; states, as I have repeatedly said, are composed, not of one, but of many elements. One element is the food-producing class, who are called farmers; a second, the class of artisans who practise the arts without which a city cannot [1291a1] exist—of these arts some are absolutely necessary, others contribute to luxury or to the grace of life. The third class is that of traders, and by traders I mean those who are engaged in buying and selling, whether in commerce or in retail trade. A fourth [5] class is that of labourers. The military make up the fifth class, and they are as necessary as any of the others, if the country is not to be the slave of every invader. For how can a state which has any title to the name be of a slavish nature? The state is independent and self-sufficing, but a slave is the reverse of independent. Hence [10] we see that this subject, though ingeniously, has not been satisfactorily treated in the Republic. Socrates says that a state is made up of four sorts of people who are absolutely necessary; these are a weaver, a farmer, a shoemaker, and a builder; afterwards, finding that they are not enough, he adds a smith, and again a [15] herdsman, to look after the necessary animals; then a merchant, and then a retail trader. All these together form the complement of the first state, as if a state were established merely to supply the necessaries of life, rather than for the sake of the good, or stood equally in need of shoemakers and of farmers. But he does not admit into the state a military class until the country has increased in size, and is [20] beginning to encroach on its neighbour’s land, whereupon they go to war. Yet even amongst his four original citizens, or whatever be the number of those whom he associates in the state, there must be some one who will dispense justice and determine what is just. And as the soul may be said to be more truly part of an animal than the body, so the higher parts of states, that is to say, the warrior class, [25] the class engaged in the administration of justice, and that engaged in deliberation, which is the special business of political understanding—these are more essential to the state than the parts which minister to the necessaries of life. Whether their several functions are the functions of different citizens, or of the same—for it may often happen that the same persons are both soldiers and farmers—is immaterial to [30] the argument. The higher as well as the lower elements are to be equally considered parts of the state, and if so, the military element at any rate must be included. There are also the wealthy who minister to the state with their property; these form the seventh class. The eighth class is that of public servants and of administrators; for [35] the state cannot exist without rulers. And therefore some must be able to take office and to serve the state, either always or in turn. There only remains the class of those who deliberate and who judge between disputants; we were just now distinguishing [40] them. If the presence of all these elements, and their fair and equitable organization, is necessary to states, then there must also be persons who have the ability of [1291b1] statesmen. Different functions appear to be often combined in the same individual; for example, the soldier may also be a farmer, or an artisan; or, again the counsellor a judge. And all claim to possess political ability, and think that they are quite [5] competent to fill most offices. But the same persons cannot be rich and poor at the same time. For this reason the rich and the poor are especially regarded as parts of a [10] state. Again, because the rich are generally few in number, while the poor are many, they appear to be antagonistic, and as the one or the other prevails they form the government. Hence arises the common opinion that there are two kinds of government—democracy and oligarchy.