Aristotle says (in the Nikom. Ethics, i. 5) when discussing the various ideas entertained about happiness — Οἱ μὲν οὖν πολλοὶ παντελῶς ἀνδραποδώδεις φαίνονται βοσκημάτων βίον προαιρούμενοι. This is much the estimation which the Platonic Guardians would be apt to form respecting the Demos.
[134] The foregoing remarks are an expansion, and a sequel, of Aristotle’s objection against the Platonic Republic — That it is not One City, but two discordant cities in that which is nominally One. I must however add that the same objection may be urged against the Xenophontic constitution of a city; and also, in substance, even against the proposition of Aristotle himself for the same purpose. Xenophon, in his Cyropædia, proposes a severe, life-long drill and discipline, like that of the Spartans: from which indeed he does not formally exclude any citizens, but which he announces to be actually attended only by the wealthy, since they alone can afford to attend continuously and habitually, the poorer men being engaged in the cares of maintenance. All the functions of the state, civil and military, are performed exclusively by those who go through the public discipline. We have here the two cities in One, which Aristotle objects to in Plato; with the consequent loss of civic fraternity between them. And when we look to that which Aristotle himself suggests, we find him evading the objection by a formal sanction of the very mischief upon which the objection is founded. He puts the husbandmen and artisans altogether out of the pale of his city, which is made to include the disciplined citizens or Guardians alone. His city may thus be called One, inasmuch as it admits only homogeneous elements, and throws out all such as are heterogeneous; but he thus avowedly renounces as insoluble the problem which Plato and Xenophon try, though unsuccessfully, to solve. If there be discord and alienation among the constituent members of the Platonic and Xenophontic city — there will subsist the like feelings, in Aristotle’s proposition, between the members of the city and the outlying, though indispensable, adjuncts. There will be the same mischief in kind, and probably exaggerated in amount: since the abolition of the very name and idea of fellow-citizen tends to suppress altogether an influence of tutelary character, however insufficient as to its force.
Plato’s scheme fails, mainly because he provides no training for the Demos.
In explanation of the foregoing remarks, I will add that Plato fails in his purpose not from the goodness of the training which he provides for his select Few, but from leaving the rest of his people without any training — without even so much as would enable them properly to appreciate superior training in the few who obtain it — without any powers of self-defence or self-helpfulness. His fundamental postulate — That every man shall do only one thing — when applied to the Guardians, realises itself in something great and considerable: but when applied to the ordinary pursuits of life, reduces every man to a special machine, unfit for any other purpose than its own. Though it is reasonable that a man should get his living by one trade, and should therefore qualify himself peculiarly and effectively for that trade — it is not reasonable that he should be altogether impotent as to every thing else: nor that his happiness should consist, as Plato declares that it ought, exclusively in the performance of this one service to the commonwealth. In the Platonic Republic, the body of the people are represented not only as without training, but as machines rather than individual men. They exist partly as producers to maintain, partly as governable matter to obey, the Guardians; and to be cared for by them.
Principle of Aristotle — That every citizen belongs to the city, not to himself — applied by Plato to women.
Aristotle, when speaking about the citizens of his own ideal commonwealth (his citizens form nearly the same numerical proportion of the whole population, as the Platonic Guardians), tells us — “Since the End for which the entire City exists is One, it is obviously necessary that the education of all the citizens should be one and the same, and that the care of such education should be a public duty — not left in private hands as it is now, for a man to teach his children what he thinks fit. Public exigencies must be provided for by public training. Moreover, we ought not to regard any of the citizens as belonging to himself, but all of them as belonging to the city: for each is a part of the city: and nature prescribes that the care of each part shall be regulated with a view to the care of the whole.”[135]
[135] Aristotel. Politic. viii. 1, p. 1337, Ἐπεὶ δ’ ἓν τὸ τέλος τῇ πόλει πάσῃ, φανερὸν ὅτι καὶ τὴν παιδείαν μίαν καὶ τὴν αὐτὴν ἀναγκαῖον εἶναι πάντων, καὶ ταύτης τὴν ἐπιμέλειαν εἶναι κοινὴν καὶ μὴ κατ’ ἰδίαν· ὃν τρόπον νῦν ἕκαστος ἐπιμελεῖται τῶν αὐτοῦ τέκνων ἰδία τε καὶ μάθησιν ἰδίαν, ἣν ἂν δόξῃ, διδάσκων … Ἅμα δὲ οὐδὲ χρὴ νομίζειν αὐτὸν αὑτοῦ τινὰ εἶναι τῶν πολιτῶν, ἀλλὰ πάντας τῆς πόλεως … ἡ δ’ ἐπιμέλειας πέφυκεν ἑκάστου μορίου βλέπειν πρὸς τὴν τοῦ ὅλου ἐπιμέλειαν.
The broad principle thus laid down by Aristotle is common to him with Plato, and lies at the bottom of the schemes of polity imagined by both. Each has his own way of applying it.
Plato clearly perceives that it cannot be applied with consistency and effect, unless women are brought under its application as well as men. And to a great extent, Aristotle holds the same opinion too. While commending the Spartan principle, that the character of the citizen must be formed and upheld by continued public training and discipline — Aristotle blames Lykurgus for leaving the women (that is, a numerical half of the city) without training or discipline; which omission produced (he says) very mischievous effects, especially in corrupting the character of the men. He pronounces this to be a serious fault, making the constitution inconsistent and self-contradictory, and indeed contrary to the intentions of Lykurgus himself; who had tried to bring the women under public discipline as well as the men, but was forced to desist by their strenuous opposition.[136] Such remarks from Aristotle are the more remarkable, since it appears as matter of history, that the maidens at Sparta (though not the married women) did to a great extent go through gymnastic exercises along with the young men.[137] These exercises, though almost a singular exception in Greece, must have appeared to Aristotle very insufficient. What amount or kind of regulation he himself would propose for women, he has not defined. In his own ideal commonwealth, he lays it down as alike essential for men and women to have their bodies trained and exercised so as to be adequate to the active duties of free persons (as contrasted with the harder preparation requisite for the athletic contests, which he disapproves), but he does not go into farther particulars.[138] The regulations which he proposes, too, with reference to marriage generally and to the maintenance of a vigorous breed of citizens, show, that he considered it an important part of the lawgiver’s duty to keep up by positive interference the physical condition both of males and females.[139]
[136] Aristotel. Politic. ii. 9, p. 1269, b. 12. Ἔτι δ’ ἡ περὶ τὰς γυναῖκας ἄνεσις καὶ πρὸς τὴν προαίρεσιν τῆς πολιτείας βλαβερὰ καὶ πρὸς εὐδαιμονίαν πόλεως … Ὡστ’ ἐν ὅσαις πολιτείαις φαύλως ἔχει τὸ περὶ τὰς γυναῖκας, τὸ ἥμισυ τῆς πόλεως εἶναι δεῖ νομίζειν ἀνομοθέτητον. Ὅπερ ἐκεῖ (at Sparta) συμβέβηκεν· ὅλην γὰρ τὴν πόλιν ὁ νομοθέτης εἶναι βουλόμενος καρτερικήν, κατὰ μὲν τοὺς ἄνδρας φανερός ἐστι τοιοῦτος ὤν, ἐπὶ δὲ τῶν γυναικῶν ἐξημέληκεν, &c. … Τὰ δὲ περὶ τὰς γυναῖκας ἔχοντα μὴ καλῶς ἔοικεν οὐ μόνον ἀπρέπειάν τινα ποιεῖν τῆς πόλεως αὐτῆς καθ’ αὑτήν, ἀλλὰ συμβάλλεσθαί τι πρὸς τὴν φιλοχρηματίαν.