A Treatise on Government | Page 9

individual is plain, for if an individual is not in himself sufficient to compose a perfect
government, he is to a city as other parts are to a whole; but he that is incapable of society,
or so complete in himself as not to want it, makes no part of a city, as a beast or a god.
There is then in all persons a natural impetus to associate with each other in this manner,
and he who first founded civil society was the cause of the greatest good; for as by the
completion of it man is the most excellent of all living beings, so without law and justice
he would be the worst of all, for nothing is so difficult to subdue as injustice in arms: but
these arms man is born with, namely, prudence and valour, which he may apply to the
most opposite purposes, for he who abuses them will be the most wicked, the most cruel,
the most lustful, and most gluttonous being imaginable; for justice is a political virtue, by
the rules of it the state is regulated, and these rules are the criterion of what is right.

CHAPTER III
SINCE it is now evident of what parts a city is composed, it will be necessary to treat
first of family government, for every city is made up of families, and every family [1253b]
has again its separate parts of which it is composed. When a family is complete, it
consists of freemen and slaves; but as in every subject we should begin with examining
into the smallest parts of which it consists, and as the first and smallest parts of a family
are the master and slave, the husband and wife, the father and child, let us first inquire
into these three, what each of them may be, and what they ought to be; that is to say, the
herile, the nuptial, and the paternal. Let these then be considered as the three distinct parts
of a family: some think that the providing what is necessary for the family is something
different from the government of it, others that this is the greatest part of it; it shall be
considered separately; but we will first speak of a master and a slave, that we may both
understand the nature of those things which are absolutely necessary, and also try if we
can learn anything better on this subject than what is already known. Some persons have
thought that the power of the master over his slave originates from his superior
knowledge, and that this knowledge is the same in the master, the magistrate, and the
king, as we have already said; but others think that herile government is contrary to
nature, and that it is the law which makes one man a slave and another free, but that in
nature there is no difference; for which reason that power cannot be founded in justice,
but in force.



CHAPTER IV
Since then a subsistence is necessary in every family, the means of procuring it certainly
makes up part of the management of a family, for without necessaries it is impossible to
live, and to live well. As in all arts which are brought to perfection it is necessary that
they should have their proper instruments if they would complete their works, so is it in
the art of managing a family: now of instruments some of them are alive, others
inanimate; thus with respect to the pilot of the ship, the tiller is without life, the sailor is
alive; for a servant is as an instrument in many arts. Thus property is as an instrument to
living; an estate is a multitude of instruments; so a slave is an animated instrument, but
every one that can minister of himself is more valuable than any other instrument; for if
every instrument, at command, or from a preconception of its master's will, could
accomplish its work (as the story goes of the statues of Daedalus; or what the poet tells us
of the tripods of Vulcan, "that they moved of their own accord into the assembly of the
gods "), the shuttle would then weave, and the lyre play of itself; nor would the architect
want servants, or the [1254a] master slaves. Now what are generally called instruments
are the efficients of something else, but possessions are what we simply use: thus with a
shuttle we make something else for our use; but we only use a coat, or a bed: since then
making and using differ from each other in species, and they both require their

instruments, it is necessary that these should be different from each other. Now life is
itself what we use, and not what we employ as the efficient of