Politics: A Treatise on Government. Aristotle

not of the few but of the rich. And each class is thought of, not as trying to express an ideal, but as struggling to acquire power or maintain its position. If ever the class existed in unredeemed nakedness, it was in the Greek cities of the fourth century, and its existence is abundantly recognised by Aristotle. His account of the causes of revolutions in Book V. shows how far were the existing states of Greece from the ideal with which he starts. His analysis of the facts forces him to look upon them as the scene of struggling factions. The causes of revolutions are not described as primarily changes in the conception of the common good, but changes in the military or economic power of the several classes in the state. The aim which he sets before oligarchs or democracies is not the good life, but simple stability or permanence of the existing constitution.

      With this spirit of realism which pervades Books IV., V., and VI. the idealism of Books I., II., VII., and VIII. is never reconciled. Aristotle is content to call existing constitutions perversions of the true form. But we cannot read the Politics without recognising and profiting from the insight into the nature of the state which is revealed throughout. Aristotle's failure does not lie in this, that he is both idealist and realist, but that he keeps these two tendencies too far apart. He thinks too much of his ideal state, as something to be reached once for all by knowledge, as a fixed type to which actual states approximate or from which they are perversions. But if we are to think of actual politics as intelligible in the light of the ideal, we must think of that ideal as progressively revealed in history, not as something to be discovered by turning our back on experience and having recourse to abstract reasoning. If we stretch forward from what exists to an ideal, it is to a better which may be in its turn transcended, not to a single immutable best. Aristotle found in the society of his time men who were not capable of political reflection, and who, as he thought, did their best work under superintendence. He therefore called them natural slaves. For, according to Aristotle, that is a man's natural condition in which he does his best work. But Aristotle also thinks of nature as something fixed and immutable; and therefore sanctions the institution of slavery, which assumes that what men are that they will always be, and sets up an artificial barrier to their ever becoming anything else. We see in Aristotle's defence of slavery how the conception of nature as the ideal can have a debasing influence upon views of practical politics. His high ideal of citizenship offers to those who can satisfy its claims the prospect of a fair life; those who fall short are deemed to be different in nature and shut out entirely from approach to the ideal.

      A. D. LINDSAY.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

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      First edition of works (with omission of Rhetorica, Poetica, and second book of OEconomica), 5 vols. by Aldus Manutius, Venice, 1495–8; re-impression supervised by Erasmus and with certain corrections by Grynaeus (including Rhetorica and Poetica), 1531, 1539, revised 1550; later editions were followed by that of Immanuel Bekker and Brandis (Greek and Latin), 5 vols. The 5th vol. contains the Index by Bonitz, 1831–70; Didot edition (Greek and Latin), 5 vols. 1848–74.

      ENGLISH TRANSLATIONS: Edited by T. Taylor, with Porphyry's Introduction, 9 vols., 1812; under editorship of J. A. Smith and W. D. Ross, 1908.

      Later editions of separate works:

      De Anima: Torstrik, 1862; Trendelenburg, 2nd edition, 1877, with English translation, E. Wallace, 1882; Biehl, 1884, 1896; with English, R. D. Hicks, 1907.

      Ethica: J. S. Brewer (Nicomachean), 1836; W. E. Jelf, 1856; J. E. T. Rogers, 1865; A. Grant, 1857–8, 1866, 1874, 1885; E. Moore, 1871, 1878, 4th edition, 1890; Ramsauer (Nicomachean), 1878, Susemihl, 1878, 1880, revised by O. Apelt, 1903; A. Grant, 1885; I. Bywater (Nicomachean), 1890; J. Burnet, 1900.

      Historia Animalium: Schneider, 1812; Aubert and Wimmer, 1860, Dittmeyer, 1907.

      Metaphysica: Schwegler, 1848; W. Christ, 1899.

      Organon: Waitz, 1844–6.

      Poetica: Vahlen, 1867, 1874, with Notes by E. Moore, 1875; with English translation by E. R. Wharton, 1883, 1885; Uberweg, 1870, 1875; with German translation, Susemihl, 1874; Schmidt, 1875; Christ, 1878; I. Bywater, 1898; T. G. Tucker, 1899.

      De Republics, Atheniensium: Text and facsimile of Papyrus, F. G. Kenyon, 1891, 3rd edition, 1892; Kaibel and Wilamowitz—Moel-lendorf, 1891, 3rd edition, 1898; Van Herwerden and Leeuwen (from Kenyon's text), 1891; Blass, 1892, 1895, 1898, 1903; J. E. Sandys, 1893.

      Politica: Susemihl, 1872; with German, 1878, 3rd edition, 1882; Susemihl and Hicks, 1894, etc.; O. Immisch, 1909.

      Physica: C. Prantl, 1879.

      Rhetorica: Stahr, 1862; Sprengel (with Latin text), 1867; Cope and Sandys, 1877; Roemer, 1885, 1898.

      ENGLISH TRANSLATIONS OF ONE OR MORE WORKS: De Anima (with Parva Naturalia), by W. A. Hammond, 1902. Ethica: Of Morals to Nicomachus, by E. Pargiter, 1745; with Politica, by J. Gillies, 1797, 1804, 1813; with Rhetorica and Poetica, by T. Taylor, 1818, and later editions. Nicomachean Ethics, 1819; mainly from text of Bekker, by D. P. Chase, 1847; revised 1861, and later editions with an introductory essay by G. H. Lewes (Camelot Classics), 1890; re-edited by J. M. Mitchell (New Universal Library), 1906, 1910; with an introductory essay by Prof. J.H. Smith (Everyman's Library), 1911; by R.W.Browne (Bohn's Classical Library), 1848, etc.; by R. Williams, 1869, 1876; by W. M. Hatch and others (with translation of paraphrase attributed to Andronicus of Rhodes), edited by E. Hatch, 1879; by F, H. Peters, 1881; J. E. C. Welldon, 1892; J. Gillies (Lubbock's Hundred Books), 1893. Historia Animalium, by R. Creswell (Bohn's Classical Library), 1848; with Treatise on Physiognomy, by T. Taylor, 1809. Metaphysica, by T. Taylor, 1801; by J. H. M'Mahon (Bohn's Classical Library), 1848. Organon, with Porphyry's Introduction, by O. F. Owen (Bohn's Classical Library), 1848. Posterior Analytics, E. Poste, 1850; E. S. Bourchier, 1901; On Fallacies, E. Poste, 1866. Parva Naturalia (Greek and English), by G. R. T. Ross, 1906; with De Anima, by W. A. Hammond, 1902. Youth and Old Age, Life and Death and Respiration, W. Ogle, 1897. Poetica, with Notes from the French of D'Acier, 1705; by H. J. Pye, 1788, 1792; T. Twining, 1789,1812, with Preface and Notes by H. Hamilton, 1851; Treatise on Rhetorica and Poetica, by T. Hobbes (Bohn's Classical Library), 1850; by Wharton, 1883 (see Greek version), S. H. Butcher, 1895, 1898, 3rd edition, 1902; E. S. Bourchier, 1907; by Ingram Bywater, 1909. De Partibus Animalium, W. Ogle, 1882. De Republica Athenientium, by E. Poste, 1891; F. G. Kenyon, 1891; T. J. Dymes, 1891. De Virtutibus et Vitiis, by W. Bridgman, 1804. Politica, from the French of Regius, 1598; by W. Ellis, 1776, 1778, 1888 (Morley's Universal Library), 1893 (Lubbock's Hundred Books); by E. Walford (with AEconomics, and Life by Dr. Gillies) (Bohn's Classical Library), 1848; J. E. C. Welldon, 1883; B. Jowett, 1885; with Introduction and Index by H. W. C. Davis, 1905; Books i. iii. iv. (vii.) from Bekker's text by W. E. Bolland, with Introduction by A. Lang, 1877. Problemata (with writings of other philosophers), 1597, 1607, 1680, 1684, etc. Rhetorica: A summary by T. Hobbes, 1655 (?), new edition, 1759; by the translators of the Art of Thinking, 1686, 1816; by D. M. Crimmin, 1812; J. Gillies, 1823; Anon. 1847; J. E. C. Welldon, 1886; R. C. Jebb, with Introduction and Supplementary Notes by J. E. Sandys, 1909 (see under Poetica and Ethica). Secreta Secretorum (supposititious work), Anon. 1702; from the Hebrew version by M. Gaster, 1907, 1908. Version by Lydgate and Burgh, edited by R. Steele (E.E.T.S.), 1894, 1898.

      LIFE, ETC.: J. W. Blakesley, 1839; A Crichton (Jardine's Naturalist's Library), 1843; J. S. Blackie, Four Phases of Morals, Socrates, Aristotle, etc., 1871; G. Grote, Aristotle, edited by A. Bain and G. C. Robertson, 1872, 1880; E. Wallace, Outlines of the Philosophy of Aristotle, 1875, 1880; A. Grant (Ancient Classics for English readers), 1877; T. Davidson, Aristotle and Ancient Educational Ideals (Great Educators), 1892.

A TREATISE ON GOVERNMENT

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BOOK I