In considering the proposals of earlier theorists for the remedy of political defects it is hardly possible and nowise needful to exhaust all the indications of dissatisfaction with existing systems. Of Euripides and Socrates, the two great questioners, enough has been said above. The reactionary Isocrates was for many years a contemporary of Aristotle. What we can no longer reproduce is the talk of active-minded critics in the social circles of Athens. It happens that Xenophon has left us a sketch of the ordinary conversations of Socrates. No doubt these were the most important examples of their kind, and his method a powerful, if sometimes irritating, stimulus to thought. But we are not to assume a lack of other questioners, acute and even sincere, more especially among men of oligarchic leanings. That Aristotle came into touch with such persons is probable from his connexion with Plato. Certain passages in the Constitution of Athens, in which he is reasonably suspected[391] of giving a partisan view of historical events, point to the same conclusion. We shall never know all the criticisms and suggestions of others that this watchful collector heard and noted. But it is both possible and desirable to recall those to which his own record proves him to have paid attention.
Both Hippodamus and Plato based their schemes on a class-system, in which the farmer-class form a distinct body: but the former made them citizens with voting rights. Being unarmed, and so at the mercy of the military class, Aristotle held that their political rights were nugatory. In the Republic, Plato gave them no voice in state-affairs, but in the Laws he admitted them to the franchise. While these two reformers made provision for a military force, Phaleas, ignoring relations with other states, made none. To Phaleas, equality in landed estate seemed the best means of promoting harmony and wellbeing in the community; and he would effect this equality by legal restrictions. This proposition Aristotle rejected as neither adequate nor suited to its purpose. Moral[392] influences, hard work, discretion, even intellectual activity, can alone produce the temper of moderation that promotes concord and happiness. In short, if you are to effect any real improvement, you must start from the doctrine of the Mean[393] and not trust to material equalizing. The several tenure of land-lots was generally recognized, with variations in detail; Plato in the Laws abandoned the impracticable land-system of the Republic, and not only assigned a κλῆρος to each citizen household, but arranged it in two[394] sections, for reasons given above. The attempt to ensure the permanence of the number of land-lots and households by strict legal regulation, as some legislators had tried to do, is also a general feature of these speculations. Plato in the Laws even went further, and would place rigid restrictions on acquisition of property of all kinds. All agree in the usual Greek contempt for those engaged in manual or sedentary trades. Such ‘mechanical’ (βάναυσοι) workers were held to be debased in both body and mind below the standard of ‘virtue’ required of the good soldier or citizen. Phaleas made these ‘artisans’ public slaves de iure: Hippodamus placed them, with the farmers, in nominal citizenship but de facto bondage. Plato tolerates them because he cannot do without them. In the matter of hard bodily labour, free or slave, the position of Plato is clear. He would devolve it upon slaves; in agriculture, with a coexisting alternative system of serf-tenants. But both classes are to be Barbarians. It seems that Hippodamus meant the public, if not the private, land of his model state to be worked by slaves. Most striking is the fact that Plato in his later years combined the aim of self-sufficiency with dependence on servile labour. Commerce is, for the moral health of the state, to be strictly limited. The supply of necessary food-stuffs is to be a domestic industry, carried on by alien serfs or slaves for the most part. Such communism as exists among the Guardians in the Republic is a communism of consumers who take no part in material production: and it is abandoned in the Laws.
The above outlines must suffice as a sketch of the situation both in practice and in theory when Aristotle took the matter in hand. The working defects of Greek constitutions were obvious to many, and the incapacity of the ignorant masses in democracies was especially evident to thoughtful but irresponsible critics. Yet the selfishness of the rich in oligarchies was not ignored, and the instability of governments supported by only a minority of the citizens was an indisputable fact. The mass of citizens (that is, full members of the state according to the qualification-rules in force) had to come in somewhere, to give numerical strength to a government. How was governing capacity to be placed in power under such conditions? Experience suggested that things had been better for Athens when a larger part of her citizens lived on the land. Use could no doubt be made of this experience in case an opening for increasing the number of peasant farmers[395] should occur. But it was precisely in states where such a policy was most needed that an opening was least likely to occur. It would seem then that the only chance of improving government lay in persuading the average citizen to entrust wider powers to a specially selected body of competent men, in short to carry into politics the specializing principle[396] already developed by the advance of civilization in other departments. Now the average citizen was certain to test the plans of reformers by considering how their operation would affect cases like his own. It was therefore necessary to offer him a reassuring picture of projects of this kind, if they were to receive any hearing at all. To own a plot of land, inalienable and hereditary, was a security against indigence. To have the labour of cultivating it performed as a matter of course by others was a welcome corollary. To be relieved of mechanical drudgery by aliens and slaves was a proposal sure to conciliate Greek pride. And the resulting leisure for the enlightened discharge of the peculiarly civic functions of war and government was an appeal to self-esteem and ambition. But that the creation of a ruling class of Guardians with absolute power, such as those of Plato’s Republic, would commend itself to democratic Greeks, was more than any practical man could believe. Nor would the communism of those Guardians appear attractive to the favourers of oligarchy. Therefore Plato himself had to recast his scheme, and try to bring it out of dreamland by concessions to facts of Greek life. Not much was gained thereby, and the great difficulty, how to make a start, still remained. That much could be done by direct legislative action was a tradition in Greek thought fostered by tales of the achievements of early lawgivers. But to remodel the whole fabric of a state so thoroughly that an entire change should be effected in the political atmosphere in which the citizens must live and act, while the citizens themselves would be the same persons, reared in old conditions and ideas, was a project far beyond the scope of ordinary legislation. To Aristotle it seemed that the problem must be approached differently.
This is not the place to discuss the two distinct lines taken by him; first, that the character of the state depends on that of its members, and secondly, that the individual only finds his true self as member of a state. The subject has been fully[397] treated, better than I could treat it; and in constructing a model there remains the inevitable difficulty, where to begin. The highest development of the individual is only attainable under the training provided by the model state, and this state is only possible as an association of model citizens. If we may conjecture Aristotle’s answer from a rule[398] laid down in the Ethics, he would say ‘first learn by doing, and then you can do what you have learnt to do.’ That is, effort (at first imperfect) will improve faculty, and by creating habit will develope full capacity. But even so it would remain uncertain whether the individual, starting on a career of self-improvement, is to work up to the making of a model state, or the imperfect state to start training its present citizens to perfection. The practical difficulty is there still. Nor is it removed by putting the first beginnings of training so early[399] that they even precede the infant citizen’s birth, in the form of rules for eugenic breeding. Aristotle’s procedure is to postulate favourable equipment, geographical and climatic, a population of high qualities (that is, Greek,) and then to consider how he would organize the state and train its members—if the postulated conditions were realized and he had a free hand. In this new Utopia it is most significant to observe what he adopts from historical experience and the proposals of earlier theorists, and in what respects he departs from them. It is in particular his attitude towards ownership and tillage of land, and labour in general, that is our present concern.
As it follows from his doctrine of the Mean that the virtue of the state and its several members must be based on the avoidance of extremes, so it follows[400] from the moral aim of the state that its component elements are not all ‘parts’ of the state in the same strict sense. Economically, those who provide food clothing etc are parts, necessary to the existence of the community. Politically (for politics have a moral end) they are below the standard of excellence required for a share in the government of a perfect state. They cannot have the leisure or the training to fit them for so responsible a charge. Therefore they cannot be citizens. To maintain secure independence and internal order the citizens, and the citizens only, must bear arms. And, since the land must belong to the possessors of arms, none but citizens can own land. This does not imply communism. There will have to be public[401] land, from the produce of which provision will be made for the service of religion and for the common tables at which citizens will mess. To maintain these last by individual contributions would be burdensome to the poor and tend to exclude them. For rich and poor there will be. But the evil of extreme poverty will be avoided. There will be private land, out of which each citizen (that is evidently each citizen-household) will have an allotment of land. This κλῆρος will be in two[402] parcels, one near the city and the other near the state-frontier, so that issues of peace and war may not be affected by the bias of local interests. The cultivation of these allotments will be the work of subjects, either inhabitants of the district (περίοικοι) or slaves; in any case aliens, not Greeks; and in the case of slaves care must be taken not to employ too many of the same race together or such as are high-spirited. He is concerned to secure the greatest efficiency and to leave the least possible facilities for rebellion. The labourers will belong to the state or to individual citizens according to the proprietorship of the land on which they are severally employed. By these arrangements he has provided for the sustenance of those who in the true political sense are ‘parts’ of the state (πόλις), and for their enjoyment of sufficient leisure[403] to enable them to conduct its government in the paths of virtue and promote the good life (τὸ εὖ ζῆν) which is the final cause of state existence.
The citizens then have the arms and the land and all political power. Among themselves they are on an equal footing, only divided functionally according to age: deliberative and judicial duties belonging to the elder men, military activities to the younger. It is impossible to overlook the influence of the Spartan system on the speculations of Aristotle as well as those of Plato. The equality of Spartan citizens was regarded as evidence[404] of a democratic element in their constitution, and we find this same theoretical equality among the full citizens at any given moment in the developing constitution of Rome. It is significant that Aristotle felt the necessity of such an equality. He remarks[405] that the permanence of a constitution depends on the will of the possessors of arms. We may observe that he seldom refers to the mercenaries so commonly employed in his day, save as his bodyguard of usurping tyrants. But in one passage[406] he speaks of oligarchies being driven to employ them at a pinch for their own security against the Demos, and of their own overthrow in consequence. Therefore he did not ignore the risk run by relying on hirelings: naturally he would prefer to keep the military service of his model state in the hands of his model citizens. But he had no belief[407] in the blind devotion of Sparta to mere preparation for warfare. Peace is the end of war, not war of peace. If you do not learn to make a proper use of peace, in the long run you will fail in war also: hence the attainment of empire was the ruin of Sparta: she had not developed the moral qualities needed for ruling in time of peace. But in his model state he seems not to make adequate provision for the numbers required in war. His agricultural labourers are not to be employed in warfare, as the Laconian Helots regularly were. He only admits them to the service of the oar, controlled by the presence of marine soldiers, who are free citizens like the poorer class of Athenians who generally served in that capacity. The servile character of rustic labour on his plan is thus reasserted, and with it the superior standing of land forces as compared with maritime. The days were past when Athenians readily served at the oar in their own triremes, cruising among the subject states and certain of an obsequious reception in every port. Hired rowers had always been employed to some extent, even by Athens: in this later period the motive power of war-gallies of naval states was more and more obtained from slaves. There was an economic analogy between farm-labour and oar-labour. The slave was forced to toil for practically no more[408] than his food: the profits of the farm and the profits of war-booty fell to be shared in either case by few.
Aristotle, who was well aware of the merits of the working farmer, the peasant citizen, and recognized that such men had been a sound and stable element in the Athens of former days, would surely not have treated agriculture as a work reserved for servile hands, had he not been convinced that the old rural economy was gone and could never be revived. For, if suggestions from Sparta influenced him when designing Utopian institutions, it is no less clear that the Utopian setting—territory, city, port-town,—are merely modifications of Attica, Athens, Peiraeus. In Greece there was no state so favoured geographically, so well equipped by nature for independence prosperity and power. If a Greek community was ever to realize an artistic ideal, and live in peaceful and secure moderation a model life of dignity and virtue, it could hardly have a better chance of success than in some such advantageous position as that enjoyed by Athens. Her defects lay in her institutions, such as he viewed them at their present stage of development. These could not be approved as they stood: they needed both political and economic reform. Into the former we need not enter here: the later democracy could not but disgust one who judged merit from the standpoint of his doctrine of the Mean. Economically, we may infer from his own model project that two great changes would be required. Citizens must all have an interest in the land, though farmed by slave labour. The port-town must no longer be a centre of promiscuous commerce, thronged with a cosmopolitan population of merchants seamen dock-labourers etc and the various purveyors who catered for their various appetites. In truth the Peiraeus was a stumbling-block to him as to Plato, and probably to most men[409] who did not themselves draw income from its trade or its iniquities, or who did not derive political power from the support of its democratic citizens. To have a state ‘self-sufficing’ so far as to get its necessary food from its own territory, and to limit commerce to a moderate traffic sufficient to procure by exchange such things as the citizens wanted but could not produce (for instance[410] timber), was a philosopher’s aspiration.
While proposing to restrict commercial activity as being injurious in its effect, when carried to excess, on the higher life of the state, Aristotle like Plato admits[411] that not only slaves but free aliens, permanently or temporarily resident, must form a good part of the population. He does not even[412] like Plato propose to fix a limit to the permissible term of metic residence. Apparently he would let the resident alien make his fortune in Utopia and go on living there as a non-citizen of means. But he would not allow him to hold real property within the state, as Xenophon or some other[413] writer had suggested. That the services of aliens other than slaves were required for the wellbeing of the state, is an important admission. For it surely implies that there were departments of trade and industry in which slave-labour alone was felt to be untrustworthy, while the model citizens of a model state could not properly be so employed. The power of personal interest[414] in promoting efficiency and avoiding waste is an elementary fact not forgotten by Aristotle. Now the slave, having no personal interest involved beyond escaping punishment, is apt to be a shirker and a waster. The science of the master (δεσποτική)[415], we are told, is the science of using slaves; that is, of getting out of them what can be got. It is a science of no great scope or dignity. Hence busy masters employ overseers. He suggests that some stimulus to exertion may be found in the prospect of manumission[416] for good service. This occurs again in the Economics, but the question of what is to become of the worn-out rustic slave is not answered by him[417] any more than it is by Plato. My belief is that, so far as farm staffs are concerned, he has chiefly if not wholly in view cases[418] of stewards overseers etc. These would be in positions of some trust, perhaps occasionally filled by freemen, and to create in them some feeling of personal interest would be well worth the masters while. Domestic slavery was on a very different footing, but it too was often a worry[419] to masters. Here manumission played an obvious and important part, and perhaps still more in the clerical staffs of establishments for banking and other businesses. These phenomena of Athenian life were interesting and suggestive. Yet Aristotle is even more reticent[420] than Plato (and with less reason) on the subject of manumission: which is matter for regret.
The model state then will contain plenty of free aliens, serving the state with their talents and labour, an urban non-landholding element. They set the model citizens free for the duties of politics and war. Whether they will be bound to service in the army or the fleet, like the Athenian metics, we are not told. Nor is it easy to guess how Aristotle would have answered the question. Their main function is to carry on the various meaner or ‘mechanical’ trades and occupations, no doubt employing or not employing the help of slaves according to circumstances. All such trades were held to have a degrading effect[421] on both body and mind, disabling those practising them from attaining the highest excellence, that is the standard of model citizens in war and peace. Aristotle finds the essence of this taint in transgression of the doctrine of the Mean. Specialization carried to extremes produces professionalism which, for the sake of perfecting technical skill, sacrifices the adaptability, the bodily suppleness and strength and the mental all-round alertness and serene balance,—qualities which every intelligent Greek admired, and which Aristotle postulated in the citizens of his model community. So strong is his feeling on the point that it comes[422] out in connexion with music. The young citizens are most certainly to have musical training, but they are not to become professional performers; for this sort of technical excellence is nothing but a form of βαναυσία.