A Treatise on Government | Page 4

the men who are most truly capable of achieving that end which
the citizens have set themselves to pursue. The justest distribution of political power is
that in which there is least waste of political ability.
Further, the belief that the constitution of a state is only the outward expression of the
common aspirations and beliefs of its members, explains the paramount political
importance which Aristotle assigns to education. It is the great instrument by which the
legislator can ensure that the future citizens of his state will share those common beliefs
which make the state possible. The Greeks with their small states had a far clearer
apprehension than we can have of the dependence of a constitution upon the people who
have to work it.
Such is in brief the attitude in which Aristotle approaches political problems, but in
working out its application to men and institutions as they are, Aristotle admits certain
compromises which are not really consistent with it.
1. Aristotle thinks of membership of a state as community in pursuit of the good. He
wishes to confine membership in it to those who are capable of that pursuit in the highest
and most explicit manner. His citizens, therefore, must be men of leisure, capable of
rational thought upon the end of life. He does not recognise the significance of that less
conscious but deep-seated membership of the state which finds its expression in loyalty
and patriotism. His definition of citizen includes only a small part of the population of
any Greek city. He is forced to admit that the state is not possible without the
co-operation of men whom he will not admit to membership in it, either because they are
not capable of sufficient rational appreciation of political ends, like the barbarians whom
he thought were natural slaves, or because the leisure necessary for citizenship can only
be gained by the work of the artisans who by that very work make themselves incapable
of the life which they make possible for others. "The artisan only attains excellence in
proportion as he becomes a slave," and the slave is only a living instrument of the good
life. He exists for the state, but the state does not exist for him.
2. Aristotle in his account of the ideal state seems to waver between two ideals. There is
the ideal of an aristocracy and the ideal of what he calls constitutional government, a
mixed constitution. The principle of "tools to those who can use them" ought to lead him,
as it does Plato, to an aristocracy. Those who have complete knowledge of the good must
be few, and therefore Plato gave entire power in his state into the hands of the small
minority of philosopher guardians. It is in accordance with this principle that Aristotle
holds that kingship is the proper form of government when there is in the state one man
of transcendent virtue. At the same time, Aristotle always holds that absolute government

is not properly political, that government is not like the rule of a shepherd over his sheep,
but the rule of equals over equals. He admits that the democrats are right in insisting that
equality is a necessary element in the state, though he thinks they do not admit the
importance of other equally necessary elements. Hence he comes to say that ruling and
being ruled over by turns is an essential feature of constitutional government, which he
admits as an alternative to aristocracy. The end of the state, which is to be the standard of
the distribution of political power, is conceived sometimes as a good for the apprehension
and attainment of which "virtue" is necessary and sufficient (this is the principle of
aristocracy), and sometimes as a more complex good, which needs for its attainment not
only "virtue" but wealth and equality. This latter conception is the principle on which the
mixed constitution is based. This in its distribution of political power gives some weight
to "virtue," some to wealth, and some to mere number. But the principle of "ruling and
being ruled by turns" is not really compatible with an unmodified principle of "tools to
those who can use them." Aristotle is right in seeing that political government demands
equality, not in the sense that all members of the state should be equal in ability or should
have equal power, but in the sense that none of them can properly be regarded simply as
tools with which the legislator works, that each has a right to say what will be made of
his own life. The analogy between the legislator and the craftsman on which Plato insists,
breaks down because the legislator is dealing with men like himself, men who can to
some extent conceive their own end in life