The Basic Works of Aristotle (Modern Library Classics)

by Mckeon, Richard

  We have already determined that nature and habit and rational principle are required,69 and, of these, the proper nature of the citizens has also been defined by us.70 But we have still to consider whether the training of early life is to be that of rational principle or habit, for these two must accord, and when in accord they will then form the best of harmonies. (10) The rational principle may be mistaken and fail in attaining the highest ideal of life, and there may be a like evil influence of habit. Thus much is clear in the first place, that, as in all other things, birth implies an antecedent beginning,71 and that there are beginnings whose end is relative to a further end. Now, in men rational principle and mind are the end towards which nature strives,72 so that the birth and moral discipline of the citizens ought to be ordered with a view to them. (15) In the second place, as the soul and body are two, we see also that there are two parts of the soul, the rational and the irrational, and two corresponding states—reason and appetite. (20) And as the body is prior in order of generation to the soul, so the irrational is prior to the rational. The proof is that anger and wishing and desire are implanted in children from their very birth, but reason and understanding are developed as they grow older. Wherefore, (25) the care of the body ought to precede that of the soul, and the training of the appetitive part should follow: none the less our care of it must be for the sake of the reason, and our care of the body for the sake of the soul.

  16 Since the legislator should begin by considering how the frames of the children whom he is rearing may be as good as possible, (30) his first care will be about marriage—at what age should his citizens marry, and who are fit to marry? In legislating on this subject he ought to consider the persons and the length of their life, that their procreative life may terminate at the same period, (35) and that they may not differ in their bodily powers, as will be the case if the man is still able to beget children while the woman is unable to bear them, or the woman able to bear while the man is unable to beget, for from these causes arise quarrels and differences between married persons. Secondly, he must consider the time at which the children will succeed to their parents; there ought not to be too great an interval of age, (40) for then the parents will be too old to derive any pleasure from their affection, or to be of any use to them. [1335a] Nor ought they to be too nearly of an age; to youthful marriages there are many objections—the children will be wanting in respect to the parents, who will seem to be their contemporaries, and disputes will arise in the management of the household. Thirdly, and this is the point from which we digressed,73 the legislator must mould to his will the frames of newly-born children. (5) Almost all these objects may be secured by attention to one point. Since the time of generation is commonly limited within the age of seventy years in the case of a man, and of fifty in the case of a woman, the commencement of the union should conform to these periods. (10) The union of male and female when too young is bad for the procreation of children; in all other animals the offspring of the young are small and ill-developed, and with a tendency to produce female children, and therefore also in man, as is proved by the fact that in those cities in which men and women are accustomed to marry young, (15) the people are small and weak; in childbirth also younger women suffer more, and more of them die; some persons say that this was the meaning of the response once given to the Troezenians74—the oracle really meant that many died because they married too young; it had nothing to do with the ingathering of the harvest. (20) It also conduces to temperance not to marry too soon; for women who marry early are apt to be wanton; and in men too the bodily frame is stunted if they marry while the seed is growing (for there is a time when the growth of the seed, (25) also, ceases, or continues to but a slight extent). Women should marry when they are about eighteen years of age, and men at seven and thirty; then they are in the prime of life, (30) and the decline in the powers of both will coincide. Further, the children, if their birth takes place soon, as may reasonably be expected, will succeed in the beginning of their prime, when the fathers are already in the decline of life, and have nearly reached their term of three-score years and ten. (35)

  Thus much of the age proper for marriage: the season of the year should also be considered; according to our present custom, people generally limit marriage to the season of winter, and they are right. (40) The precepts of physicians and natural philosophers about generation should also be studied by the parents themselves; the physicians give good advice about the favourable conditions of the body, and the natural philosophers about the winds; of which they prefer the north to the south. [1335b]

  What constitution in the parent is most advantageous to the offspring is a subject which we will consider more carefully75 when we speak of the education of children, and we will only make a few general remarks at present. (5) The constitution of an athlete is not suited to the life of a citizen, or to health, or to the procreation of children, any more than the valetudinarian or exhausted constitution, but one which is in a mean between them. A man’s constitution should be inured to labour, but not to labour which is excessive or of one sort only, (10) such as is practised by athletes; he should be capable of all the actions of a freeman. These remarks apply equally to both parents.

  Women who are with child should be careful of themselves; they should take exercise and have a nourishing diet. (15) The first of these prescriptions the legislator will easily carry into effect by requiring that they shall take a walk daily to some temple, where they can worship the gods who preside over birth.76 Their minds, however, unlike their bodies, they ought to keep quiet, for the offspring derive their natures from their mothers as plants do from the earth. (20)

  As to the exposure and rearing of children, let there be a law that no deformed child shall live, but that on the ground of an excess in the number of children, if the established customs of the state forbid this (for in our state population has a limit), no child is to be exposed, but when couples have children in excess, (25) let abortion be procured before sense and life have begun; what may or may not be lawfully done in these cases depends on the question of life and sensation.

  And now, having determined at what ages men and women are to begin their union, let us also determine how long they shall continue to beget and bear offspring for the state; men who are too old, like men who are too young, produce children who are defective in body and mind; the children of very old men are weakly. (30) The limit, then, should be the age which is the prime of their intelligence, and this in most persons, according to the notion of some poets who measure life by periods of seven years, is about fifty; at four or five years later, (35) they should cease from having families; and from that time forward only cohabit with one another for the sake of health; or for some similar reason.

  As to adultery, let it be held disgraceful, in general, for any man or woman to be found in any way unfaithful when they are married, (40) and called husband and wife. [1336a] If during the time of bearing children anything of the sort occur, let the guilty person be punished with a loss of privileges in proportion to the offence.77

  17 After the children have been born, the manner of rearing them may be supposed to have a great effect on their bodily strength. (5) It would appear from the example of animals, and of those nations who desire to create the military habit, that the food which has most milk in it is best suited to human beings; but the less wine the better, if they would escape diseases. Also all the motions to which children can be subjected at their early age are very useful. But in order to preserve their tender limbs from distortion, (10) some nations have had recourse to mechanical appliances which straighten their bodies. To accustom children to the cold from their earliest years is also an excellent practice, which greatly conduces to health, and hardens them for military service. Hence many barbarians have a custom of plunging their children at birth into a cold stream; others, (15) like the Celts, clothe them in a light wrapper only. For human nature should be early habituated to endure all which by habit it can be made to
endure; but the process must be gradual. And children, from their natural warmth, (20) may be easily trained to bear cold. Such care should attend them in the first stage of life.

  The next period lasts to the age of five; during this no demand should be made upon the child for study or labour, lest its growth be impeded; and there should be sufficient motion to prevent the limbs from being inactive. (25) This can be secured, among other ways, by amusement, but the amusement should not be vulgar or tiring or effeminate. The Directors of Education, as they are termed, should be careful what tales or stories the children hear,78 for all such things are designed to prepare the way for the business of later life, (30) and should be for the most part imitations of the occupations which they will hereafter pursue in earnest.79 Those are wrong who in their laws attempt to check the loud crying and screaming of children, (35) for these contribute towards their growth, and, in a manner, exercise their bodies.80 Straining the voice has a strengthening effect similar to that produced by the retention of the breath in violent exertions. (40) The Directors of Education should have an eye to their bringing up, and in particular should take care that they are left as little as possible with slaves. [1336b] For until they are seven years old they must live at home; and therefore, even at this early age, it is to be expected that they should acquire a taint of meanness from what they hear and see. Indeed, there is nothing which the legislator should be more careful to drive away than indecency of speech; for the light utterance of shameful words leads soon to shameful actions. (5) The young especially should never be allowed to repeat or hear anything of the sort. A freeman who is found saying or doing what is forbidden, if he be too young as yet to have the privilege of reclining at the public tables, (10) should be disgraced and beaten, and an elder person degraded as his slavish conduct deserves. And since we do not allow improper language, clearly we should also banish pictures or speeches from the stage which are indecent. (15) Let the rulers take care that there be no image or picture representing unseemly actions, except in the temples of those Gods at whose festivals the law permits even ribaldry, and whom the law also permits to be worshipped by persons of mature age on behalf of themselves, their children, and their wives. But the legislator should not allow youth to be spectators of iambi or of comedy until they are of an age to sit at the public tables and to drink strong wine; by that time education will have armed them against the evil influences of such representations. (20)

  We have made these remarks in a cursory manner—they are enough for the present occasion; but hereafter81 we will return to the subject and after a fuller discussion determine whether such liberty should or should not be granted, (25) and in what way granted, if at all. Theodorus, the tragic actor, was quite right in saying that he would not allow any other actor, (30) not even if he were quite second-rate, to enter before himself, because the spectators grew fond of the voices which they first heard. And the same principle applies universally to association with things as well as with persons, for we always like best whatever comes first. And therefore youth should be kept strangers to all that is bad, (35) and especially to things which suggest vice or hate. When the five years have passed away, during the two following years they must look on at the pursuits which they are hereafter to learn. There are two periods of life with reference to which education has to be divided, from seven to the age of puberty, and onwards to the age of one and twenty. The poets who divide ages by sevens82 are in the main right: (40) but we should observe the divisions actually made by nature; for the deficiencies of nature are what art and education seek to fill up. [1337a]

  Let us then first inquire if any regulations are to be laid down about children, and secondly, whether the care of them should be the concern of the state or of private individuals, which latter is in our own day the common custom, (5) and in the third place, what these regulations should be.

  * * *

  1 Cp. Laws, iii. 697 B, V. 743 E; N. Eth. i. 1098b 12.

  2 Cp, i, 1256b 35.

  3 N. Eth. i. 1099b 20.

  4 Cp. Plato, Laws, i. 633 ff.

  5 Cp. ii. 1265a 20, 1267a 19.

  6 1333a 11 sqq.

  7 i. 4–7.

  8 Cp. iii. 1284b 32 and 1288a 28.

  9 Bk. ii.

  10 Cp. ii. 1265a 17.

  11 Cp. Poet. 1450b 36.

  12 Cp. v. 1309b 23.

  13 Cp. ii. 1265a 32.

  14 This promise is not fulfilled.

  15 1326b 22–24.

  16 Cp. Plato, Laws, iv. 704 D-705 B.

  17 Cp. ii. 1265a 20.

  18 1326a 9–b 24.

  19 Cp. Plato, Rep. iv. 435 E, 436 A.

  20 Rep. ii. 375 c.

  21 Cp. 1331b 18.

  22 Cp. iii. 1278a 2.

  23 Cp. i. 1253b 32.

  24 Cp. ii. 1261b 12, iii. 1275b 20, v. 1303a 26.

  25 Cp. 1323a 21–1324a 4, 1328a 37 sq.

  26 Cp. Plato, Laws, xi. 919 C-E.

  27 i. e. the physical and the mental.

  28 Cp. 1328b 35.

  29 Cp. ii. 1264b 17–24.

  30 Cp. infra, 1330a 25–31.

  31 i. e. between these gulfs and the Strait of Messina.

  32 Cp. Plato, Laws, iii. 676; Aristotle, Metaph. xii. 1074b 10; and Pol. ii. 1264a 3.

  33 Cp. Metaph. i. 981b 23; Meteor. i. 14. 352b 19; Plato, Timaeus, 22 B; Laws, ii. 656, 657.

  34 1328b 33–1339a 2, 1329a 17–26, 1326b 26–32.

  35 Cp. ii. 5, Rep. iii. 416 D.

  36 Aristotle does not give any explanation in the Politics.

  37 Cp. ii. 1271a 28.

  38 Cp. Plato, Laws, vi. 777 C, D.

  39 Cp. 1329a 26.

  40 Cp. ii. 1267b 16.

  41 A. does not do so in the Politics, but Cp. Oec. 1344b 15.

  42 1327a 4–40.

  43 Repetition of 1326b 40.

  44 Cp. ii. 1267b 22.

  45 Cp. Plato, Laws, vi. 778 D.

  46 Cp. 1330a 3.

  47 Cp. Plato, Laws, v. 738 B-D, vi. 759 C, 778 c, viii. 848 D-E.

  48 Nic. Eth. i. 1098a 16, x. 1176b 4; and Cp. 1328a 37.

  49 Nic. Eth. i. 1100b 22, 1101a 13.

  50 Nic. Eth. iii. 1113a 22–b 1; E. E. vii. 1248b 26; M. M. ii. 1207b 31.

  51 Cp. N. Eth. x. 1179b 20.

  52 1327b 36.

  53 Cp. iii. 1279a 8.

  54 Cp. i. 1254b 16, 1284a 3.

  55 1329a 2–17.

  56 Cp. iii. 1277b 9.

  57 iii. 1278b 32–1279a 8, Cp. 1277a 33–b 30.

  58 Cp. iii. 4, 5.

  59 Cp. Nic. Eth. i. 1102b 28.

  60 Cp. Nic. Eth. vi. 1139a 6.

  61 Nic. Eth. x. 1177b 4.

  62 Cp. Plato, Laws, i. 628, 638.

  63 Cp. i. 1254a 25.

  64 Cp. v. 1301b 20, 1307a 3.

  65 Cp. ii. 1271b 3.

  66 1333a 35, 1334a 2.

  67 i. e. ‘not only by some of the speculative but also by some of the practical virtues’.

  68 Cp. ii. 1271a 41.

  69 1332a 39 sqq.

  70 c. 7.

  71 i. e. the union of the parents.

  72 i. e. the birth of the offspring, which is the end of the union of the parents, points to a further end, the development of mind.

  73 1334b 29 sqq.

  74 ‘Plough not the young field’.

  75 A. does not actually do so.

  76 Cp. Plato, Laws, vii. 789 E.

  77 Cp. Laws, viii. 841 D, E.

  78 Plato, Rep. ii. 377 ff.

  79 Plato, Laws, i. 643.

  80 Plato, Laws, vii. 792 A.

  81 An unfulfilled promise.

  82 Cp. 1335b 33.

  BOOK VIII

  1 No one will doubt that the legislator should direct his attention above all to the education of youth; for the neglect of education does harm to the constitution. The citizen should be moulded to suit the form of government under which he lives.1 For each government has a peculiar character which originally formed and which continues to preserve it. (15) The charac
ter of democracy creates democracy, and the character of oligarchy creates oligarchy; and always the better the character, the better the government.