ARISTOTLE'S THEORY OF THE STATE
First, then, let us try to enumerate whatever worthy utterances have
proceeded from men of the past upon any aspect of the subject, and
then, referring to our collections of _Constitutional Histories_,
let us seek to arrive at a theory as to what sorts of things
preserve and destroy each particular form of government, and see for
what reasons some are well, some ill, managed. Succeeding in this,
we may, perhaps, the better learn both what is the best form of
government, and what arrangements, laws, and customs are best suited
to each form.--Aristotle.
Man is a political animal.--_Id._
The State is prior to the individual.--_Id._
Without friends no one would choose to live, although he possessed
all other blessings.--_Id._
If happiness be self-determination in accordance with worth, we must
conclude that it will be in accordance with the supreme worth, which
will be the worth of the noblest part of us. This part, whatever it
may be, whether intellect (νοῦς) or something else, that which by
nature evidently rules and guides us and has insight into things
beautiful and divine, whether it be itself divine, or the divinest
part of us, is that whose self-determination, in accordance with its
proper worth, will be the perfect happiness. That this consists in
the vision of divine things has already been said.... This, indeed,
is the supreme self-determination, for the reason that intellect is
the highest part of us, and that with which it deals is the highest
of the knowable.... But a life of this sort would be something
higher than the human; for he who lived it would not be living as
man, but as the subject of something divine.... If, then, intellect
is something divine in relation to man, the life lived according to
it must be divine in relation to human life. Instead, then, of
following those who advise us, as being human, to set our thoughts
upon human things, and, as being mortals, to set them on mortal
things, it is our duty, as far as may be, to act as immortal beings,
and do all we can to live in accordance with the supreme part of
us.--Aristotle.
Man alone, among all beings, occupies a middle place between things
corruptible and things incorruptible.... Two ends, therefore,
Ineffable Providence has ordained for man: Blessedness in this life,
which consists in the exercise of native faculty, and is figured by
the Earthly Paradise, and blessedness in the eternal life, which
consists in the enjoyment of the vision of God, a thing not to be
achieved by any native faculty, unless aided by divine light, and
which is to be understood by the Heavenly Paradise.... These ends
and means would be disregarded by human passion, if men were not
restrained in their course by bit and bridle.... For this reason man
required a double directive, corresponding to this double end. He
required the Supreme Pontiff to guide the human race to life
eternal, and the Emperor to guide the human race to temporal
felicity, in accordance with the teachings of philosophy.... The
truth with regard to the question whether the authority of the
Emperor is derived directly from God or from another, must not be
taken so strictly as to mean that the Roman Prince is not, in some
respects, subject to the Roman Pontiff, the fact being that this
mortal felicity of ours is, in some sense, ordained with a view to
immortal felicity. Let Cæsar, therefore, display that reverence for
Peter which the first-born son ought to display for his father, so
that, being illuminated by his father's grace, he may with greater
virtue enlighten the world, which he has been called to govern by
Him who is governor of all things, spiritual and temporal.--Dante.
O Grace abounding, whence I did presume
To fix my gaze upon the eternal light
So far that I consumed my sight therein!
Within its deeps I saw internalized
Into one volume, bound with love,
That which is outered in the universe;--
Substance and accident, and all their modes,
As 'twere, together merged in such a sort
That what I mean is but a simple light.
The universal form of this same knot
I think I saw, because, when thus I speak,
I feel that I rejoice with larger joy.--_Id._
Man's chief end is to glorify God, and to enjoy him
forever.--_Westminster Shorter Catechism_.
Plato's chief purpose, in writing upon education, had been to suggest a
remedy for the social and moral conditions of his native Athens.
Aristotle has no such purpose. He is, in a very deep sense, a
cosmopolitan, and writes in the interest of science and universal
utility. His range of vision is not confined to Athens, or even to
Greece (though he is very proud of being a Greek), but ranges over the
whole known world in time and space. Unlike Plato, too, who had been
familiar mainly with institutions of the past in Egypt and Greece,
Aristotle is deeply affected by the tendencies of the future, and,
though no one lays greater stress than he upon the necessity of a
knowledge of the past for him who would construct a sound social theory,
he nevertheless declares that the whole of the past is shaped by
something which is in the future, by the ultimate realization. This view
comes out in a paradoxical way in his famous saying that "the State is
prior to the individual," by which he means that it is man's political
nature working in him that makes him an individual, and at the same time
realizes itself in a State. And this brings us to Aristotle's conception
of the State, which we must consider before taking up his theory of
education, for the reason that to him, as to all the ancient world,
education is a function of the State, and is conducted, primarily at
least, for the ends of the State.
Before venturing upon a theory of the State, Aristotle, true to his
inductive principles, wrote the Constitutional Histories of over two
hundred and fifty different states. One of these, the _Constitutional
History of Athens_, has recently been discovered and published (see p.
96). He held that it was only by means of a broad induction, thus
rendered possible, that he could discover the idea of the State, that
is, its self-realizing form. Employing this method, then, he came to the
conclusion that the State is that highest social institution which
secures the highest good or happiness of man. Having, in a previous
treatise, satisfied himself that this good is Worth (ἀρετή), and worth
being in every case the full exercise of characteristic or
differentiating faculty, he concludes that, since man's distinguishing
faculty is reason, the State is the institution which secures to man the
fullest and freëst exercise of this. It follows directly that the State
is, simply and solely, the supreme educational institution, the
university to which all other institutions are but preparatory. And two
more conclusions follow: (1) that states will differ in constitution
with the different educational needs of the peoples among whom they
exist, and (2) that, since all education is but a preparation for some
worthy activity, political education, the life of man as a citizen, is
but a preparation for the highest activity, which, because it is
highest, must necessarily be an end in itself. This activity, Aristotle
argues, can be none other than contemplation, the Vision of the Divine
(θεωρία).
Results which have moved the world followed logically from this
doctrine. Whereas Plato had made provision for a small and select body
of super-civic men, and so paved the way for religious monasticism and
asceticism, Aristotle maintains that in every civilized man, as such,
there is a super-civic part, in fact, a superhuman and divine part, for
the complete realization of which all the other parts, and the State
wherein they find expression, are but means. Here we have, in embryo,
the whole of Dante's theory of the relation of Church and State, a
theory which lies at the basis of all modern political effort, however
little the fact may be recognized. Here, indeed, we have the whole
framework of the _Divine Comedy_; here too we have the doctrine of the
Beatific Vision, which for ages shaped and, to a large extent, still
shapes, the life of Christendom. Well might Dante claim Aristotle as his
master (see p. 153)! Well might the great doctors of the Church speak of
him as "_The_ Philosopher," and as the "Forerunner of Christ in Things
Natural." In vain did Peter Ramus and Luther and Bruno and Bacon
depreciate or anathematize him! He is more powerful to-day in thought
and life than at any time for the last twenty-two centuries.
It may be asked how far, and in what form, Aristotle conceives the
divine life to be possible for man on earth. He answers that, though it
cannot be perfectly or continuously realized here, it is in some degree
and for certain times attainable (see p. 161). In so far as it is a
social life, it is the life of friendship or spiritual love (φιλία), to
which he has devoted almost two books of his _Ethics_, books which give
us a loftier idea of his personal purity and worth than any other of his
extant writings. He insists that friendship is the supreme blessing (see
p. 166), and that "whatever a man's being is, or whatever he chooses to
live for, in that he wishes to spend his life in the company of his
friends." It is even said that Aristotle, while teaching in the Lyceum,
gathered about him a knot of noble youths and earnest students, and
formed them into a kind of community, with a view to leading a truly
spiritual social life.