ioo Isolation of the state impossible 



enable their subjects to enjoy as much happiness as their inferior 

 natures can receive. This solution necessitates the maintenance of 

 slavery 1 as existing by nature, and the adoption of economic views 

 that have been rightly called reactionary. The student of human 

 nature and experience unwisely departed from the safer ground of 

 his own principles and offered a solution that was no solution at all. 



As the individual man cannot live in complete isolation, supplying 

 his own needs and having no relations with other men, for his man- 

 hood would thus remain potential and never become actual so it 

 will be with the state also. It must not merely allow aliens to reside 

 in it and serve its purposes internally : it will have to stand in some 

 sort of relations to other states. This is sufficiently asserted by the 

 provision made for the contingency of war. But in considering how 

 far a naval force would be required 2 in his model state he remarks 

 ' The scale of this force must be determined by the part (rov PLOV) 

 played by our state : if it is to lead a life of leadership and have 

 dealings with other states (rjyefjLovifebv /cal TTO\I,TIICOV ftLov\ it will need 

 to have at hand this force also on a scale proportioned to its activities.' 

 Then, jealous ever of the Mean, he goes on to deny the necessity of 

 a great ' nautical rabble/ in fact the nuisance of the Peiraeus referred 

 to above. On the protection of such maritime commerce as he would 

 admit he does not directly insist ; but, knowing Athens so well, no 

 doubt he had it in mind. Another illustration of the virtuous Mean 

 may be found in the rules of education. The relations of the quarrel- 

 some Greek states had been too often hostile. The Spartan training 

 had been too much admired. But it was too one-sided, too much a 

 glorification of brute force, and its inadequacy had been exposed 

 since Leuctra. Its success had been due to the fact that no other 

 state had specialized in preparation for war as Sparta had done. Once 

 others took up this war-policy in earnest, Sparta's vantage was gone. 

 This vantage was her all. Beaten in war, she had no reserve of non- 

 military qualities to assuage defeat and aid a revival. The citizens of 

 Utopia must not be thus brutalized. Theirs must be the true man's 

 courage (avSpia) 3 , as far removed from the reckless ferocity of the 

 robber or the savage as from cowardice. It is surely not too much to 

 infer 4 that military citizens of this character were meant to pursue a 

 public policy neither abject nor aggressive. 



It is in connexion with bodily training that we come upon views 

 that throw much light on the position of agricultural labour. There is, 

 he remarks, a. general agreement 5 that gymnastic exercises do promote 



1 Pol i 5, 6. 2 Pol vn 6 7, 8. 



3 Pol VII 15 1-6, vin 4 1-5, and a number of passages in the Ethics. 



4 Indeed in Pol VII 15 2-3 he practically says so. 5 Pol Vin 3 7. 



