Aristotle and 'good living? 85 



that no hired freemen were employed on farms. For special jobs, as 

 we shall see later, they were called in : but this was only temporary 

 employment. The fjucrOwroi or fl^re? were a despised 1 class: some of 

 them were freedmen. The competition with slave-labour doubtless had 

 something to do with this, and to be driven by necessity to such labour 

 was galling to a citizen, as we have already learnt from Xenophon. 



XVII. ARISTOTLE. 



The great founder of the philosophy of experience is a witness 2 of 

 exceptional value. He collected and recorded the facts and traditions of 

 the past, judging them from the point of view of his own day. Stimu- 

 lated by the theories of his master Plato, he also strove, by sketching the 

 fabric of a model state, to indicate the lines on which Greek political 

 development might be conducted with advantage. Inasmuch as ideal cir- 

 cumstances were rather to be desired than expected, he did not restrict 

 his interest in the future to the mere designing of an ideal : taking states 

 as he found them, conditioned by their situation and past history, he 

 sought for the causes of their growth and decay, and aimed at dis- 

 covering cures for their various maladies. But throughout, whether 

 looking to the past or the future, he was guided by a characteristic 

 moral purpose. For him * good living ' (TO ev fjv) is the aim and object 

 of political institutions. It is in the state that man finds the possibility 

 of reaching his full development : for he is by nature a 'political animal/ 

 That is, he cannot live alone. Each step in association (household, 

 village,) brings him nearer to that final union of the city. In this he 

 attains the highest degree of manhood of which he (as Man, differen- 

 tiated from other animals by reason and speech,) is capable. This 

 completion of his potentialities is the proof of his true nature ; that he 

 realizes his best self in the TroXt? shews that he is a TroXm/coz/ &>oz/. 

 The animal needs met in the more primitive associations are of course 

 met in the city also. But there is something more, and this something 

 more is a moral element, from which is derived the possibility of 'good 

 living/ as contrasted with existence of a more predominantly animal 

 character. Therefore, though in point of time the man comes before 

 the state, in logical order the state comes first : for the man can only 

 exist in the fulness of his nature when he is a citizen. He is by the law 

 of his nature part of a state, potentially: as such a part he is to be 



1 See Isocrates Plataicus 48 p 306 (of Plataeans), and Isaeus v 39 with Wyse's note. 



2 I should mention that for simplicity sake I refer to the Politics by the books in the old 

 order. Also that I do not raise the question of the authorship of the first book of the so- 

 called Economics, as the point does not affect the argument. In common with all students of 

 the Politics I am greatly indebted to the edition of Mr W L Newman. 



