A Treatise on Government

A Treatise on Government

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Title: A Treatise on Government
Author: Aristotle
Release Date: October, 2004 [EBook #6762] [Yes, we are more than one year ahead of
schedule] [This file was first posted on January 24, 2003]
Edition: 10
Language: English
Character set encoding: ASCII
*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK, A TREATISE ON
GOVERNMENT ***

This eBook was produced by Eric Eldred.

A TREATISE ON GOVERNMENT
TRANSLATED FROM THE GREEK OF

ARISTOTLE
BY WILLIAM ELLIS, A.M.
LONDON &.TORONTO PUBLISHED BY J M DENT & SONS LTD. &.IN NEW
YORK BY E. P. DUTTON &. CO
FIRST ISSUE OF THIS EDITION 1912 REPRINTED 1919, 1923, 1928

INTRODUCTION
The Politics of Aristotle is the second part of a treatise of which the Ethics is the first part.
It looks back to the Ethics as the Ethics looks forward to thee Politics. For Aristotle did
not separate, as we are inclined to do, the spheres of the statesman and the moralist. In the
Ethics he has described the character necessary for the good life, but that life is for him
essentially to be lived in society, and when in the last chapters of the Ethics he comes to
the practical application of his inquiries, that finds expression not in moral exhortations
addressed to the individual but in a description of the legislative opportunities of the
statesman. It is the legislator's task to frame a society which shall make the good life
possible. Politics for Aristotle is not a struggle between individuals or classes for power,
nor a device for getting done such elementary tasks as the maintenance of order and
security without too great encroachments on individual liberty. The state is "a community
of well-being in families and aggregations of families for the sake of a perfect and
self-sufficing life." The legislator is a craftsman whose material is society and whose aim
is the good life.
In an early dialogue of Plato's, the Protagoras, Socrates asks Protagoras why it is not as
easy to find teachers of virtue as it is to find teachers of swordsmanship, riding, or any
other art. Protagoras' answer is that there are no special teachers of virtue, because virtue
is taught by the whole community. Plato and Aristotle both accept the view of moral
education implied in this answer. In a passage of the Republic (492 b) Plato repudiates
the notion that the sophists have a corrupting moral influence upon young men. The
public themselves, he says, are the real sophists and the most complete and thorough
educators. No private education can hold out against the irresistible force of public
opinion and the ordinary moral standards of society. But that makes it all the more
essential that public opinion and social environment should not be left to grow up at
haphazard as they ordinarily do, but should be made by the wise legislator the expression
of the good and be informed in all their details by his knowledge. The legislator is the
only possible teacher of virtue.
Such a programme for a treatise on government might lead us to expect in the Politics
mainly a description of a Utopia or ideal state which might inspire poets or philosophers
but have little direct effect upon political institutions. Plato's Republic is obviously
impracticable, for its author had turned away in despair from existing politics. He has no
proposals, in that dialogue at least, for making the best of things as they are. The first
lesson his philosopher has to learn is to turn away from this world of becoming and decay,
and to look upon the unchanging eternal world of ideas. Thus his ideal city is, as he says,
a pattern laid up in heaven by which the just man may rule his life, a pattern therefore in
the meantime for the individual and not for the statesman. It is a city,