It is from this doctrine that mediæval Christianity derives its opposition between the vita contemplativa and vita activa and its preference for the former, though in the mediæval mind the contemplative life has come to mean generally a kind of brooding over theological speculations and of absorption in mystical ecstasy very foreign to the spirit of Aristotle. The types by which the contrast of the two lives is illustrated, Rachael and Leah, Mary and Martha, are familiar to all readers of Christian literature.
+The Theory of the State+.--Man is by nature a political animal, a being who can only develop his capacities by sharing in the life of a community. Hence Aristotle definitely rejects the view that the state or society is a mere creature of convention or agreement, an institution made by compact between individuals for certain special ends, not growing naturally out of the universal demands and aspirations of humanity. Mankind, he urges, have never existed at all as isolated individuals. Some rudimentary form of social organisation is to be found wherever men are to be found. The actual stages in the development of social organisation have been three--the family, the village community, the city state. In the very rudest forms of social life known to us, the patriarchal family, not the individual, is the social unit. Men lived at first in separate families under the control of the head of the family. Now a family is made up in its simplest form of at least three persons, a man, his wife, and a servant or slave to do the hard work, though very poor men often have to replace the servant by an ox as the drudge of all work. Children when they come swell the number, and thus we see the beginnings of complex social relations of subordination in the family itself. It involves three such distinct relations, that of husband and wife, that of parent and child, that of master and man. The family passes into the village community, partly by the tendency of several families of common descent to remain together under the direction of the oldest male member of the group, partly by the association of a number of distinct families for purposes of mutual help and protection against common dangers. Neither of these forms of association, however, makes adequate provision for the most permanent needs of human nature. Complete security for a permanent supply of material necessaries and adequate protection only come when a number of such scattered communities pool their resources, and surround themselves with a city wall. The city state, which has come into being in this way, proves adequate to provide from its own internal resources for all the spiritual as well as the material needs of its members. Hence the independent city state does not grow as civilisation advances into any higher form of organisation, as the family and village grew into it. It is the end, the last word of social progress. It is amazing to us that this piece of cheap conservatism should have been uttered at the very time when the system of independent city states had visibly broken down, and a former pupil of Aristotle himself was founding a gigantic empire to take their place as the vehicle of civilisation.
The end for which the state exists is not merely its own self-perpetuation. As we have seen, Aristotle assigns a higher value to the life of the student than to the life of practical affairs. Since it is only in the civilised state that the student can pursue his vocation, the ultimate reason for which the state exists is to educate its citizens in such a way as shall fit them to make the noble use of leisure. In the end the state itself is a means to the spiritual cultivation of its individual members. This implies that the chosen few, who have a vocation to make full use of the opportunities provided for leading this life of noble leisure, are the real end for the sake of which society exists. The other citizens who have no qualification for any life higher than that of business and affairs are making the most of themselves in devoting their lives to the conduct and maintenance of the organisation whose full advantages they are unequal to share in. It is from this point of view also that Aristotle treats the social problem of the existence of a class whose whole life is spent in doing the hard work of society, and thus setting the citizen body free to make the best use it can of leisure. In the conditions of life in the Greek world this class consisted mainly of slaves, and thus the problem Aristotle has to face is the moral justifiability of slavery. We must remember that he knew slavery only in its comparatively humane Hellenic form. The slaves of whom he speaks were household servants and assistants in small businesses. He had not before his eyes the system of enormous industries carried on by huge gangs of slaves under conditions of revolting degradation which disgraced the later Roman Republic and the early Roman Empire, or the Southern States of North America. His problems are in all essentials much the same as those which concern us to-day in connection with the social position of the classes who do the hard bodily work of the community.
Much consideration is given in the Politics to the classification of the different types of constitution possible for the city-state. The current view was that there are three main types distinguished by the number of persons who form the sovereign political authority, monarchy, in which sovereign power belongs to a single person; oligarchy, in which it is in the hands of a select few; democracy, in which it is enjoyed by the whole body of the citizens. Aristotle observes, correctly, that the really fundamental distinction between a Greek oligarchy and a Greek democracy was that the former was government by the propertied classes, the latter government by the masses. Hence the watchword of democracy was always that all political rights should belong equally to all citizens, that of oligarchy that a man's political status should be graded according to his "stake in the country." Both ideals are, according to him, equally mistaken, since the real end of government, which both overlook, is the promotion of the "good life." In a state which recognises this ideal, an aristocracy or government by the best, only the "best" men will possess the full rights of citizenship, whether they are many or few. There might even be a monarch at the head of such a state, if it happened to contain some one man of outstanding intellectual and moral worth. Such a state should be the very opposite of a great imperial power. It should, that its cultivation may be the more intensive, be as small as is compatible with complete independence of outside communities for its material and spiritual sustenance, and its territory should only be large enough to provide its members with the permanent possibility of ample leisure, so long as they are content with plain and frugal living. Though it ought not, for military and other reasons, to be cut off from communication with the sea, the great military and commercial high road of the Greek world, it ought not to be near enough to the coast to run any risk of imperilling its moral cultivation by becoming a great emporium, like the Athens of Pericles. In the organisation of the society care should be taken to exclude the agricultural and industrial population from full citizenship, which carries with it the right to appoint and to be appointed as administrative magistrates. This is because these classes, having no opportunity for the worthy employment of leisure, cannot be trusted to administer the state for the high ends which it is its true function to further.
Thus Aristotle's political ideal is that of a small but leisured and highly cultivated aristocracy, without large fortunes or any remarkable differences in material wealth, free from the spirit of adventure and enterprise, pursuing the arts and sciences quietly while its material needs are supplied by the labour of a class excluded from citizenship, kindly treated but without prospects. Weimar, in the days when Thackeray knew it as a lad, would apparently reproduce the ideal better than any other modern state one can think of.
The object of the Politics is, however, not merely to discuss the ideal state but to give practical advice to men who might be looking forward to actual political life, and would therefore largely have to be content with making the best of existing institutions. In the absence of the ideal aristocracy, Aristotle's preference is for what he calls Polity or constitutional government, a sort of compromise between oligarchy and democracy. Of course a practical statesman may have to work with a theoretically undesirable constitution, such as an oligarchy or an unqualified democracy. But it is only in an ideal constitution that the education which makes its subject a good man, in the philosopher's sense of the word, will also make him a good citizen. If the constitution is bad, then the education best fitted to make a man loyal to it may have to be very different from that which you would choose to make him a good man. The discussion of the kind of education desirable for the best kind of state, in which to be a loyal citizen and to be a good man are the same thing, is perhaps the most permanently valuable part of the Politics. Though Aristotle's writings on "practical" philosophy have been more read in modern times than any other part of his works, they are far from being his best and most thorough performances. In no department of his thought is he quite so slavishly dependent on his master Plato as in the theory of the "good for man" and the character of "moral" excellence. No Aristotelian work is quite so commonplace in its handling of a vast subject as the Politics. In truth his interest in these social questions is not of the deepest. He is, in accordance with his view of the superiority of "theoretical science," entirely devoid of the spirit of the social reformer. What he really cares about is "theology" and "physics," and the fact that the objects of the educational regulations of the Politics are all designed to encourage the study of these "theoretical" sciences, makes this section of the Politics still one of the most valuable expositions of the aims and requirements of a "liberal" education.
All education must be under public control, and education must be universal and compulsory. Public control is necessary, not merely to avoid educational anarchy, but because it is a matter of importance to the community that its future citizens should be trained in the way which will make them most loyal to the constitution and the ends it is designed to subserve. Even in one of the "bad" types of state, where the life which the constitution tends to foster is not the highest, the legislator's business is to see that education is directed towards fostering the "spirit of the constitution." There is to be an "atmosphere" which impregnates the whole of the teaching, and it is to be an "atmosphere" of public spirit. The only advantage which Aristotle sees in private education is that it allows of more modification of programme to meet the special needs of the individual pupil than a rigid state education which is to be the same for all. The actual regulations which Aristotle lays down are not very different from those of Plato. Both philosophers hold that "primary" education, in the early years of life, should aim partly at promoting bodily health and growth by a proper system of physical exercises, partly at influencing character and giving a refined and elevated tone to the mind by the study of letters, art, and music. Both agree that this should be followed in the later "teens" by two or three years of specially rigorous systematic military training combined with a taste of actual service in the less exhausting and less dangerous parts of a soldier's duty. It is only after this, at about the age at which young men now take a "university" course, that Plato and Aristotle would have the serious scientific training of the intellect begun. The Politics leaves the subject just at the point where the young men are ready to undergo their special military training. Thus we do not know with certainty what scientific curriculum Aristotle would have recommended, though we may safely guess that it would have contained comparatively little pure mathematics, but a great deal of astronomy, cosmology, and biology.
With respect to the "primary" education Aristotle has a good deal to say. As "forcing" is always injurious, it should not be begun too soon. For the first five years a child's life should be given up to healthy play. Great care must be taken that children are not allowed to be too much with "servants," from whom they may imbibe low tastes, and that they are protected against any familiarity with indecency. From five to seven a child may begin to make a first easy acquaintance with the life of the school by looking on at the lessons of its elders. The real work of school education is to begin at seven and not before.
We next have to consider what should be the staple subjects of an education meant not for those who are to follow some particular calling, but for all the full citizens of a state. Aristotle's view is that some "useful" subjects must, of course, be taught. Reading and writing, for instance, are useful for the discharge of the business of life, though their commercial utility is not the highest value which they have for us. But care must be taken that only those "useful" studies which are also "liberal" should be taught; "illiberal" or "mechanical" subjects must not have any place in the curriculum. A "liberal" education means, as the name shows, one which will tend to make its recipient a "free man," and not a slave in body and soul. The mechanical crafts were felt by Aristotle to be illiberal because they leave a man no leisure to make the best of body and mind; practice of them sets a stamp on the body and narrows the mind's outlook. In principle then, no study should form a subject of the universal curriculum if its only value is that it prepares a man for a profession followed as a means of making a living. General education, all-round training which aims at the development of body and mind for its own sake, must be kept free from the intrusion of everything which has a merely commercial value and tends to contract the mental vision. It is the same principle which we rightly employ ourselves when we maintain that a university education ought not to include specialisation on merely "technical" or "professional" studies. The useful subjects which have at the same time a higher value as contributing to the formation of taste and character and serving to elevate and refine the mind include, besides reading and writing, which render great literature accessible to us, bodily culture (the true object of which is not merely to make the body strong and hardy, but to develop the moral qualities of grace and courage), music, and drawing. Aristotle holds that the real reason for making children learn music is (1) that the artistic appreciation of really great music is one of the ways in which "leisure" may be worthily employed, and to appreciate music rightly we must have some personal training in musical execution; (2) that all art, and music in particular, has a direct influence on character.
Plato and Aristotle, though they differ on certain points of detail, are agreed that the influence of music on character, for good or bad, is enormous. Music, they say, is the most imitative of all the arts. The various rhythms, times, and scales imitate different tempers and emotional moods, and it is a fundamental law of our nature that we grow like what we take pleasure in seeing or having imitated or represented for us. Hence if we are early accustomed to take pleasure in the imitation of the manly, resolute, and orderly, these qualities will in time become part of our own nature. This is why right musical education is so important that Plato declared that the revolutionary spirit always makes its first appearance in innovations on established musical form.