MEMOIR OF ARISTOTLE. 85 



undue influence, but an equal regard is shewn to the 

 claims of freedom, wealth, and virtue. He admits, 

 however, that the public welfare may be promoted 

 under other forms a monarchy or an aristocracy 

 as well as under a " polity ;" but the latter he pre- 

 fers, as tending to maintain a due equality of rights 

 and relations among the members of the community. 

 One excellence of his system is, that it admits only 

 the general pursuit of the common weal, which, like 

 the private happiness sketched in his Ethics, is not 

 to be made a distinct object under any particular 

 form, but must be the universal aim of the whole 

 organization of the society, as individual happiness 

 is the result of the general regulation of all the mo- 

 ral principles. It is true that he supposes a society 

 to constitute itself in order to its own moral happi- 

 ness, and herein is the defect of his scheme ; but 

 this selfish principle must be considered as a neces- 

 sary substitute in his system for a divine providence, 

 the operation of which not being admitted or under- 

 stood, he was obliged to have recourse to the agency 

 of nature. 



Aristotle appears the only political theorist among 

 the ancients who never lost sight of the moral nature 

 of man in his speculations. While most others, not 

 excepting Plato himself, treated human society mere- 

 ly as a physical mass, capable of being moulded into 

 particular forms by the mechanism of external cir- 

 cumstances, he ascribes the formation of the best so- 

 cial constitution to the force of custom, philosophy, 



