4. The Statesman

As ethics is the science of individual happiness, so politics is the science of collective happiness. The function of the state is to organize a society for the greatest happiness of the greatest number. “A state is a collective body of citizens sufficient in themselves for all the purposes of life.”²⁰⁴It is a natural product, for “man is by nature a political animal”²⁰⁵—i.e., his instincts lead him to association. “The state is by nature prior to the family and the individual”: man as we know him is born into an already organized society, which molds him in its image.

Having collected and studied, with his students, 158 Greek constitutions,* Aristotle divided them into three types: monarchy, aristocracy, and timocracy—government respectively by power, by birth, and by excellence. Any one of these forms may be good according to time, place, and circumstance. “Though one form of government may be better than others,” reads a sentence which every American should memorize, “yet there is no reason to prevent another from being preferable to it under particular conditions.”²⁰⁸ Each form of government is good when the ruling power seeks the good of all rather than its own profit; in the contrary case each is bad. Each type, therefore, has a degenerate analogue when it becomes government for the governors instead of for the governed; then monarchy lapses into despotism, aristocracy into oligarchy, timocracy into democracy in the sense of rule by the common man.²⁰⁷ When the single ruler is good and able, monarchy is the best form of government; when he is a selfish autocrat we have tyranny, which is the worst form of government. An aristocratic government may be beneficial for a time, but aristocracies tend to deteriorate. “Noble character is now seldom found among those of noble birth, most of whom are good for nothing. . . . Highly gifted families often degenerate into maniacs, as, for example, the descendants of Alcibiades and the elder Dionysius; those that are stable often degenerate into fools and dullards, like the descendants of Cimon, Pericles, and Socrates.”²⁰⁶ When aristocracy decays it is usually replaced by a plutocratic oligarchy, which is government by wealth. This is better than the despotism of a king or a mob; but it gives power to men whose souls have been cramped by the petty calculations of trade, or the villainous taking of interest,²⁰⁹ and issues, as like as not, in the conscienceless exploitation of the poor.²¹⁰

Democracy—which here means government by the demos, by the common citizen—is just as dangerous as oligarchy, for it is based upon the passing victory of the poor over the rich in the struggle for power, and leads to a suicidal chaos. Democracy is at its best when it is dominated by peasant proprietors; it is at its worst when ruled by the urban rabble of mechanics and tradesmen.²¹¹ It is true that the “multitude judge of many things better than any one person, and that from their numbers they are less liable to corruption, as water is from its quantity.”²¹² But government requires special ability and knowledge; and “it is impossible for one who lives the life of a mechanic or hired servant to acquire excellence”²¹³—i.e., good character, training, and judgment. All men are created unequal; “equality is just, but only between equals”;²¹⁴ and the upper classes will as readily make seditions if an unnatural equality is enforced, as the lower classes will rebel when inequality is unnaturally extreme.*²¹⁵ When a democracy is dominated by the lower classes the rich are taxed to provide funds for the poor. “The poor receive it and again want the same supply, while the giving it is like pouring water into a sieve.”²¹⁷ And yet a wise conservative will not let people starve. “The true patriot in a democracy ought to take care that the majority are not too poor . . . he should endeavor that they may enjoy perpetual plenty; and as this is also advantageous to the rich, what can be saved out of the public money should be divided among the poor in such quantity as may enable each of them to buy a little field.”²¹⁸

Having thus given back almost as much as he took away, Aristotle offers some modest recommendations, not for a utopia but for a moderately better society.

We proceed to inquire what form of government and manner of life is best for communities in general, not adapting it to that superior virtue which is above the reach of the common people, or that education which only every advantage of nature and fortune can furnish, nor to those imaginary plans which may be formed at pleasure; but to that mode of life which the greater part of mankind can attain to, and that government which most cities may establish.²¹⁹ . . . Whoever would establish a government upon community of goods ought to consult the experience of many years, which would plainly enough inform him whether such a scheme is useful; for almost all things have already been found out.²²⁰ . . . What is common to many is taken least care of; for all men have greater regard for what is their own than for what they possess in common with others.²²¹. . . It is necessary to begin by assuming a principle of general application, viz., that the part of the state which desires the continuance of the new constitution ought to be stronger than that which does not.²²² . . . It is plain, then, that those states are best instituted wherein the middle classes are a larger and more formidable part than either the rich or the poor. . . . Whenever the number of those in the middle state has been too small, those who were the more numerous, whether the rich or the poor, always overpowered them, and assumed to themselves the administration of public affairs. . . . When either the rich get the better of the poor, or the poor of the rich, neither of them will establish a free state.²²³

To avoid these illiberal dictatorships from above or below, Aristotle proposes a “mixed constitution” or “timocracy”—a combination of aristocracy and democracy, in which the suffrage will be restricted to landowners, and a strong middle class will be the balance wheel and pivot of power. “The land ought to be divided into two parts, one of which should belong to the community in general, the other to the individuals separately.”²²⁴ All the citizens will own land; they “are to eat at public tables in certain companies”; and only they shall vote or bear arms. They will constitute a small minority—ten thousand at most—of the population. “None of them should be permitted to exercise any mechanic employment or live by trade, for these are ignoble, and destroy excellence.”²²⁵ But “neither should they be husbandmen; . . . the husbandmen should be a separate order of people”—presumably slaves. The citizens will elect the public officials, and hold each to account at the end of his term,. “Laws, properly enacted, should define the issue of all cases as far as possible, and leave as little as possible to the discretion of the judges. . . .”²²⁶ “It is better that law should rule than any individual. . . . He who entrusts any man with the supreme power gives it to a wild beast, for such his appetites sometimes make him; passion influences those who are in power, even the very best of men; but law is reason without desire.”²²⁷ The state so constructed shall regulate property, industry, marriage, the family, education, morals, music, literature, and art. “It is even more necessary to take care that the increase of the people should not exceed a certain number . . . to neglect this is to bring certain poverty upon the citizens.”²²⁸“Nothing imperfect or maimed shall be brought up.”²²⁹ Out of these sound foundations will grow the flowers of civilization and tranquillity. “Since the highest virtue is intelligence, the pre-eminent duty of the state is not to train the citizens to military excellence, but to educate them for the right use of peace.”²³⁰

It is unnecessary to sit in judgment upon Aristotle’s work. Never before, so far as we know, had anyone reared so impressive an edifice of thought. When a man covers a vast field many errors may be forgiven him if the result adds to our comprehension of life. Aristotle’s faults—or those of the volumes that we perhaps wrongly count as the considered product of his pen—are too obvious to need retailing. He is a logician, but is quite capable of bad reasoning; he lays down the laws of rhetoric and poetry, but his books are a jungle of disorder, and no breath of imagination stirs their dusty leaves. And yet, if we penetrate this verbiage we find a wealth of wisdom, and an intellectual industry that opened many paths in the country of the mind. He did not quite found biology, or constitutional history, or literary criticism—there are no beginnings—but he did more for them than any other ancient whom we know. To him science and philosophy owe a multitude of terms that in their Latin forms have facilitated learned communication and thought—principle, maxim, faculty, mean, category, energy, motive, habit, end. . . . He was, as Pater called him, “the first of the Schoolmen”;²³¹ and his long ascendancy over philosophical method and speculation suggests the fertility of his ideas and the depth of his insight. His treatises on ethics and politics stand above every rival in fame and influence. When all deductions have been made he still remains “the master of those who know,” an encouraging testimony to the elastic range of the human intellect, and a comforting inspiration to those who labor to bring man’s scattered knowledge together into perspective and understanding.