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By Root 3186 0

human affairs; everything that makes men feel a passionate interest in each other seems to be forgotten. Even his account of friendship is tepid. He shows no sign of having had any of those experiences which make it difficult to preserve sanity; all the more profound aspects of the moral life are apparently unknown to him. He leaves out, one may say, the whole sphere of human experience with which religion is concerned. What he has to say is what will be useful to comfortable men of weak passions; but he has nothing to say to those who are possessed by a god or a devil, or whom outward misfortune drives to despair. For these reasons, in my judgment, his Ethics, in spite of its fame, is lacking in intrinsic importance.

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21

ARISTOTLE'S POLITICS

Aristotle's Politics is both interesting and important—interesting, as showing the common prejudices of educated Greeks in his time, and important as a source of many principles which remained influential until the end of the Middle Ages. I do not think there is much in it that could be of any practical use to a statesman of the present day, but there is a great deal that throws light on the conflicts of parties in different parts of the Hellenic world. There is not very much awareness of methods of government in non-Hellenic States. There are, it is true, allusions to Egypt, Babylon, Persia, and Carthage, but except in the case of Carthage they are somewhat perfunctory. There is no mention of Alexander, and not even the faintest awareness of the complete transformation that he was effecting in the world. The whole discussion is concerned with City States, and there is no prevision of their obsolescence. Greece, owing to its division into independent cities, was a laboratory of political experiment; but nothing to which these experiments were relevant existed from Aristotle's time until the rise of the Italian cities in the Middle Ages. In many ways, the experience to which Aristotle appeals is more relevant to the comparatively modern world than to any that existed for fifteen hundred years after the book was written.

There are many pleasant incidental remarks, some of which may be noted before we embark upon political theory. We are told that Euripides, when he was staying at the court of Archelaus, King of Macedon, was accused of halitosis by a certain Decamnichus. To soothe his fury, the king gave him permission to scourge Decamnichus, which he did. Decamnichus, after waiting many years, joined in a successful plot to kill the king; but by this time Euripides was dead. We are told that children should be conceived in winter, when the wind is in the north; that there must be a careful avoidance of indecency, because 'shameful words lead to shameful acts', and that obscenity is never to be tolerated except in temples, where the law permits even ribaldry. People should not marry too young, because, if they do, the children will be weak and female, the wives will become wanton, and the husbands stunted in their growth. The right age for marriage is thirty-seven in men, eighteen in women.

We learn how Thales, being taunted with his poverty, bought up all the olive-presses on the instalment plan, and was then able to charge monopoly rates for their use. This he did to show that philosophers can make money, and, if they remain poor, it is because they have something more important than wealth to think about. All this, however, is by the way; it is time to come to more serious matters.

The book begins by pointing out the importance of the State; it is the highest kind of community, and aims at the highest good. In order of time, the family comes first; it is built on the two fundamental relations of man and woman, master and slave, both of which are natural. Several families combined make a village; several villages, a State, provided the combination is nearly large enough to be self-sufficing. The State, though later in time than the family, is prior to it, and even to the individual, by nature; for 'what each thing is when fully developed we call its nature', and