The scheme of government proposed by Aristotle, in the two last books of his Politics, as representing his own ideas of something like perfection, is evidently founded upon the Republic of Plato: from whom he differs in the important circumstance of not admitting either community of property or community of wives and children.
Each of these philosophers recognises one separate class of inhabitants, relieved from all private toil and all money-getting employments, and constituting exclusively the citizens of the commonwealth. This small class is in effect the city — the commonwealth: the remaining inhabitants are not a part of the commonwealth, they are only appendages to it — indispensable indeed, but still appendages, in the same manner as slaves or cattle (vii. 8). In the Republic of Plato this narrow aristocracy are not allowed to possess private property or separate families, but form one inseparable brotherhood. In the scheme of Aristotle, this aristocracy form a distinct caste of private families each with its separate property. The whole territory of the State belongs to them, and is tilled by dependent cultivators, by whom the produce is made over and apportioned under certain restrictions. A certain section of the territory is understood to be the common property of the body of citizens (i.e. of the aristocracy), and the produce of it is handed over by the cultivators into a common stock, partly to supply the public tables at which all the citizens with their wives and families are subsisted, partly to defray the cost of religious solemnities. The remaining portion of the territory is possessed in separate properties by individual citizens, who consume the produce as they please (vii. 9): each citizen having two distinct lots of land assigned to him, one near the outskirts of the territory, the other near the centre. This latter regulation also had been adopted by Plato in the treatise de Legibus, and it is surprising to observe that Aristotle himself had censured it, in his criticisms on that treatise, as incompatible with a judicious and 540careful economy (ii. 3. 8). The syssitia or public tables are also adopted by Plato, in conformity with the institutions actually existing in his time in Crete and elsewhere.
The dependent cultivators, in Aristotle’s scheme, ought to be slaves, not united together by any bond of common language or common country (vii. 9, 9): if this cannot be, they ought to be a race of subdued foreigners, degraded into periœci, deprived of all use of arms, and confined to the task of labouring in the field. Those slaves who till the common land are to be considered as the property of the collective body of citizens: the slaves on land belonging to individual citizens, are the property of those citizens.
When we consider the scanty proportion of inhabitants whom Aristotle and Plato include in the benefits of their community, it will at once appear how amazingly their task as political theorists is simplified. Their commonwealth is really an aristocracy on a very narrow scale. The great mass of the inhabitants are thrust out altogether from all security and good government, and are placed without reserve at the disposal of the small body of armed citizens.
There is but one precaution on which Aristotle and Plato rely for ensuring good treatment from the citizens towards their inferiors: and that is, the finished and elaborate education which the citizens are to receive. Men so educated, according to these philosophers, will behave as perfectly in the relation of superior to inferior, as in that of equal to equal — of citizen to citizen.
This supposition would doubtless prove true, to a certain extent, though far short of that extent which would be requisite to assure the complete comfort of the inferior. But even if it were true to the fullest extent, it would be far from satisfying the demands of a benevolent theorist. For though the inferior should meet with kindness and protection from his superior, still his mind must be kept in a degradation suitable to his position. He must be deprived of all moral and intellectual culture: he must be prevented from imbibing any ideas of his own dignity: he must be content to receive whatever is awarded, to endure whatever treatment is vouchsafed, without for an instant imagining that he has a right to benefits or that suffering is wrongfully inflicted upon him. Both Plato and Aristotle acknowledge the inevitable depravation and moral abasement of all the inhabitants excepting their favoured class. Neither of them seems solicitous either to disguise or to mitigate it.
But if they are thus indifferent about the moral condition of the mass, they are in the highest degree exact and careful 541respecting that of their select citizens. This is their grand and primary object, towards which the whole force of their intellect, and the full fertility of their ingenious imagination, is directed. Their plans of education are most elaborate and comprehensive: aiming at every branch of moral and intellectual improvement, and seeking to raise the whole man to a state of perfection, both physical and mental. You would imagine that they were framing a scheme of public education, not a political constitution: so wholly are their thoughts engrossed with the training and culture of their citizens. It is in this respect that their ideas are truly instructive.
Viewed with reference to the general body of inhabitants in a State, nothing can be more defective than the plans of both these great philosophers. Assuming that their objects were completely attained, the mass of the people would receive nothing more than that degree of physical comfort and mild usage which can be made to consist with subjection and with the extortion of compulsory labour.
Viewed with reference to the special class recognized as citizens, the plans of both are to a high degree admirable. A better provision is made for the virtue as well as for the happiness of this particular class than has ever been devised by any other political projector. The intimate manner in which Aristotle connects virtue with happiness, is above all remarkable. He in fact defines happiness to consist in the active exertion and perfected habit of virtue (ἀρετῆς ἐνέργεια καὶ χρῆσίς τις τέλειος — vi. 9. 3.): and it is upon this disposition that he founds the necessity of excluding the mass of inhabitants from the citizenship. For the purpose to be accomplished by the political union, is, the assuring of happiness to every individual citizen, which is to be effected by implanting habits of virtue in every citizen. Whoever therefore is incapable of acquiring habits of virtue, is disqualified from becoming a citizen. But every man whose life is spent in laborious avocations, whether of husbandry, of trade, or of manufacture, becomes thereby incapable of acquiring habits of virtue, and cannot therefore be admitted to the citizenship. No man can be capable of the requisite mental culture and tuition, who is not exempted from the necessity of toil, enabled to devote his whole time to the acquisition of virtuous habits, and subjected from his infancy to a severe and systematic training. The exclusion of the bulk of the people from civil rights is thus founded, in the mind of Aristotle, on the lofty idea which he forms of individual human perfection, which he conceives to be absolutely unattainable unless it be 542made the sole object of a man’s life. But then he takes especial care that the education of his citizens shall be really such as to compel them to acquire that virtue on which alone their pre-eminence is built. If he exempts them from manual or money-getting labours, he imposes upon them an endless series of painful restraints and vexatious duties for the purpose of forming and maintaining their perfection of character. He allows no luxury or self-indulgence, no misappropriation of time, no ostentatious display of wealth or station. The life of his select citizens would be such as to provoke little envy or jealousy, among men of the ordinary stamp. Its hard work and its strict discipline would appear repulsive rather than inviting: and the pre-eminence of strong and able men, submitting to such continued schooling, would appear well deserved and hardly earned.
Oligarchical reasoners in modern times employ the bad part of Aristotle’s principle without the good. They represent the rich and great as alone capable of reaching a degree of virtue consistent with the full enjoyment of political privileges: but then they take no precautions, as Aristotle does, that the men so preferred shall really answer to this exalted character. They leave the rich and great to their own self-indulgence and indolent propensities, without training them by any systematic process to habits of superior virtue. So that the select citizens on this plan are at the least no better, if indeed they are not worse, than the remaining community, while their unbounded indulgences excite either undue envy or undue admiration, among the excluded multitude. The select citizens of Aristotle are both better and wiser than the rest of their community: while they are at the same time so hemmed in and circumscribed by severe regulations, that nothing except the perfection of their character can appear worthy either of envy or admiration. Though therefore these oligarchical reasoners concur with Aristotle in sacrificing the bulk of the community to the pre-eminence of a narrow class, they fail of accomplishing the end for which alone he pretends to justify such a sacrifice — the formation of a few citizens of complete and unrivalled virtue.
The arrangements made by Aristotle for the good government of his aristocratical citizens among themselves, are founded upon principles of the most perfect equality. He would have them only limited in number, for in his opinion, personal and familiar acquaintance among them all is essentially requisite to good government (vii. 4. 7). The principal offices of the State are all to be held by the aged citizens: the military duties are to be fulfilled by the younger citizens. The city altogether, with the 543territory appertaining to it, must be large enough to be αὐτάρκης: but it must not be so extensive as to destroy personal intimacy among the citizens. A very large body are, in Aristotle’s view, incapable of discipline or regularity.
To produce a virtuous citizen, nature, habit, and reason must coincide. They ought to be endued with virtues qualifying them both for occupation and for leisure: with courage, self-denial (καρτερία), and fortitude, to maintain their independence: with justice and temperance, to restrain them from abusing the means of enjoyment provided for them: and with philosophy or the love of contemplative wisdom and science, in order to banish ennui, and render the hours of leisure agreeable to them (vii. 13. 17). They are to be taught that their hours of leisure are of greater worth and dignity than their hours of occupation. Occupation is to be submitted to for the sake of the quiet enjoyment of leisure, just as war is made for the sake of procuring peace, and useful and necessary employments undertaken for the sake of those which are honourable (vii. 13. 8). Aristotle greatly censures (see vii. 2. 5) (as indeed Plato had done before him) the institutions of Lacedæmon, as being directed exclusively to create excellent warriors, and to enable the nation to rule over foreigners. This (he says) is not only not the right end, but is an end absolutely pernicious and culpable. To maintain a forcible sovereignty over free and equal foreigners, is unjust and immoral: and if the minds of the citizens be corrupted with this collective ambition and love of power, it is probable that some individual citizen, taught by the education of the State to consider power as the first of all earthly ends, will find an opportunity to aggrandize himself by force or fraud, and to establish a tyranny over his countrymen themselves (viii. 13. 13). The Lacedæmonians conducted themselves well and flourished under their institutions, so long as they were carrying on war for the enlargement of their dominion: but they were incapable of tasting or profiting by peace: they were not educated by their legislator so as to be able to turn leisure to account (αἴτιος δ’ ὁ νομοθέτης, οὐ παιδεύσας δύνασθαι σχολάζειν — vii. 13. 15).
The education of the citizen is to commence with the body: next the irrational portion of the soul is to be brought under discipline — that is, the will and the appetites, the concupiscent and irascible passions: thirdly, the rational portion of the soul is to be cultivated and developed. The habitual desires are to be so moulded and tutored as to prepare them for the sovereignty of reason, when the time shall arrive for bringing reason into action (vii. 13. 23). They are to learn nothing until five years 544old (vii. 15. 4), their diversions are to be carefully prepared and presented to them, consisting generally of a mimicry of subsequent serious occupations (vii. 15. 15): and all the fables and tales which they hear recited are to be such as to pave the way for moral discipline (ib.); all under the superintendence of the Pædonom. No obscene or licentious talk is to be tolerated in the city (vii. 15. 7), nor any indecent painting or statue, except in the temples of some particular Deities. No youth is permitted to witness the recitation either of iambics or of comedy (vii. 15. 9), until he attains the age which qualifies him to sit at the public tables. Immense stress is laid by the philosopher on the turn of ideas to which the tender minds of youth become accustomed, and on the earliest combinations of sounds or of visible objects which meet their senses (vii. 15. 10). Πρὸς πάσας δυνάμεις καὶ τέχνας ἐστιν ἃ δεῖ προπαιδεύεσθαι καὶ προεθίζεσθαι πρὸς τὰς ἑκάστων ἐργασίας, ὥστε δῆλον ὅτι καὶ πρὸς τὰς τῆς ἀρετῆς πράξεις (viii. 1. 2).
All the citizens in Aristotle’s republic are to be educated according to one common system: each being regarded as belonging to the commonwealth more than to his own parents. This was the practice at Lacedæmon, and Aristotle greatly eulogizes it (viii. 1. 3).
Aristotle does not approve of extreme and violent bodily training, such as would bring the body into the condition of an athlete: nor does he even sanction the gymnastic labours imposed by the Lacedæmonian system, which had the effect of rendering the Spartans “brutal of soul,” for the purpose of exalting their courage (οἱ Λάκωνες — θηριώδεις ἀπεργάζονται τοῖς πόνοις, ὡς τοῦτο μάλιστα πρὸς ἀνδρείαν σύμφερον). He remarks, first, that courage is not the single or exclusive end to be aimed at in a civil education: next, that a savage and brutal soul is less compatible with exalted courage than a gentle soul, trained so as to be exquisitely sensible to the feelings of shame and honour (viii. 3. 3-5). The most sanguinary and unfeeling among the barbarous tribes, he remarks, were very far from being the most courageous. A man trained on the Lacedæmonian system, in bodily exercises alone, destitute even of the most indispensable mental culture (see below), was a real βάναυσος — useful only for one branch of political duties, and even for that less useful than if he had been trained in a different manner.
Up to the age of 14, Aristotle prescribes (ἥβη means 14 years of age — see vii. 15. 11) that boys shall be trained in gentle and regular exercises, without any severe or forced labour. From 14 to 17 they are to be instructed in various branches of 545knowledge: after 17, they are to be put to harder bodily labour and to be nourished with a special and peculiar diet (ἀναγκοφαγίαις). For how long this is to continue, is not stated. But Aristotle insists on the necessity of not giving them at the same time intellectual instruction and bodily training, for the one of these, he says, counteracts and frustrates the other (viii. 4. 2-3).
The Lacedæmonians made music no part of their education: Isocrat. Panathen. Or. xii. p. 375, B.; they did not even learn ‘letters’ (γράμματα), but they are said to have been good judges of music (viii. 4. 6). Aristotle himself however seems to think it next to impossible that men who have not learned music can be good judges (viii. 6. 1).
Aristotle admits that music may be usefully learnt as an innocent pleasure and relaxation: but he chiefly considers it as desirable on account of its moral effects, on the dispositions and affections. A right turn of the pleasurable and painful emotions is, in his opinion, essential to virtue: particular strains and particular rhythms are naturally associated with particular dispositions of mind: by early teaching, those strains and those rhythms which are associated with temperate and laudable dispositions may be made more agreeable to a youth than any others. He will like best those which he hears earliest, and which he finds universally commended and relished by those about him. A relish for the ὁμοιώματα of virtuous dispositions will tend to increase in him the love of virtue itself (viii. 6. 5. 8).
Aristotle enjoins that the youth be taught to execute music instrumentally and vocally, because it is only in this way that they can acquire a good taste or judgment in music: besides which, it is necessary to furnish boys with some occupation, to absorb their restless energies, and there is none more suitable than music. Some persons alleged that the teaching music as a manual art was banausic and degrading, lowering the citizen down to the station of a hired professional singer. Aristotle meets this objection by providing that youths shall be instructed in the musical art, but only with the view of correcting and cultivating their taste: they are to be forbidden from making any use of their musical acquisitions, in riper years, in actual playing or singing (viii. 6. 3). Aristotle observes, that music more difficult of execution had been recently introduced into the agones, and had found its way from the agones into the ordinary education. He decidedly disapproves and excludes it (viii. 6. 4). He forbids both the flute and the harp, and every other instrument requiring much art to play upon it: especially the flute, 546which he considers as not ethical, but orgiastical — calculated to excite violent and momentary emotions. The flute obtained a footing in Greece after the Persian invasion; in Athens at that time it became especially fashionable; but was discontinued afterwards (Plutarch alleges, through the influence of Alcibiades).
The suggestions of Aristotle for the education of his citizens are far less copious and circumstantial than those of Plato in his Republic. He delivers no plan of study, no arrangement of sciences to be successively communicated, no reasons for preferring or rejecting. We do not know what it was precisely which Aristotle comprehended in the term “philosophy,” intended by him to be taught to his citizens as an aid for the proper employment of their leisure. It must probably have included the moral, political, and metaphysical sciences, as they were then known — those sciences to which his own voluminous works relate.
By means of the public table, supplied from the produce of the public lands, Aristotle provides for the full subsistence of every citizen. Yet he is well aware that the citizens will be likely to increase in numbers too rapidly, and he suggests very efficient precautions against it. No child at all deformed or imperfect in frame is to be brought up: children beyond a convenient number, if born, are to be exposed: but should the law of the State forbid such a practice, care must be taken to forestall consciousness and life in them, and to prevent their birth by ἄμβλωσις (vii. 14. 10).
Aristotle establishes two agora in his city: one situated near to the harbour, adapted to the buying, selling, and storing of goods, under the surveillance of the agoranomus: the other called the free agora, situated in the upper parts of the city, set apart for the amusement and conversation of the citizens, and never defiled by the introduction of any commodities for sale. No artisan or husbandman is ever to enter the latter unless by special order from the authorities. The temples of the Gods, the residences of the various boards of government functionaries, the gymnasia of the older citizens, are all to be erected in this free agora (vii. 11). The Thessalian cities had an agora of this description where no traffic or common occupations were permitted.
The moral tendency of Aristotle’s reflections is almost always useful and elevating. The intimate union which he formally recognizes and perpetually proclaims between happiness and virtue, is salutary and instructive: and his ideas of what virtue is, are perfectly just, so far as relates to the conduct of his citizens towards each other: though they are miserably defective 547as regards obligation towards non-citizens. He always assigns the proper pre-eminence to wisdom and virtue: he never overvalues the advantages of riches, nor deems them entitled on their own account, to any reverence or submission: he allows no title to the obedience of mankind, except that which arises from superior power and disposition to serve them. Superior power and station, as he considers them, involve a series of troubles — some obligations which render them objects of desire only to men of virtue and beneficence. What is more rare and more creditable still, he treats all views of conquest and aggrandizement by a State as immoral and injurious, even to the conquerors themselves.
[END OF CHAPTER XIV]
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