[1281a] which in our view constitutes a happy and noble life; the political fellowship must therefore be deemed to exist for the sake of noble actions, not merely for living in common. [loeb_subsection_15] Hence those who contribute most to such fellowship have a larger part in the state than those who are their equals or superiors in freedom and birth but not their equals in civic virtue, or than those who surpass them in wealth but are surpassed by them in virtue.
It is therefore clear from what has been said that all those who dispute about the forms of constitution assert a part of the just principle.
[loeb_section_6] [loeb_subsection_1] But it is a matter of question what ought to be the sovereign power in the state. Clearly it must be either the multitude, or the rich, or the good, or the one man who is best of all, or a tyrant. But all of these arrangements appear to involve disagreeable consequences. For instance, if the poor take advantage of their greater numbers to divide up the property of the rich, is not this unjust? No, it may be said, for it was a resolution made by the supreme authority in just form. Then what must be pronounced to be the extreme of injustice? And again, when everybody is taken into account, suppose the majority share out among themselves the property of the minority, it is manifest that they are destroying the state; but assuredly virtue does not destroyits possessor, and justice is not destructive of the state, so that it is clear that this principle also cannot be just. [loeb_subsection_2] Also it follows from it that all the actions done by a tyrant are just, for his use of force is based upon superior strength, as is the compulsion exerted by the multitude against the rich. But is it just that the minority and the rich should rule? Suppose therefore they also act in the same way and plunder and take away the property of the multitude, is this just? If it is, so also is the plunder of the rich by the multitude. It is clear therefore that all these things are bad and not just. [loeb_subsection_3] But ought the good to rule, and be in control of all classes? If so, then it follows that all the other classes will be dishonored,The term is technical and means disfranchisement and loss of civic rights. if they are not honored by holding the offices of government; for we speak of offices as honors, and if the same persons are always in office the rest must necessarily be excluded from honor. But is it better for the most virtuous individual to be the ruler? But that is still more oligarchical, for the people excluded from honor will be more numerous. But perhaps some one would say that in any case it is a bad thing for a human being, having in his soul the passions that are the attributes of humanity, to be sovereign, and not the law. Suppose therefore that law is sovereign, but law of an oligarchic or democratic nature, what difference will it make as regards the difficulties that have been raised? for the results described before will come about just the same.
[loeb_subsection_4] Most of these points therefore must be discussed on another occasion; but the view that it is more proper for the multitude to be sovereign than the few of greatest virtue might be thought to be explicable and to have some justification, and even to be the true view. For it is possible that the many, though not individually good men,
[1281b] yet when they come together may be better, not individually but collectively, than those who are so, just as public dinners to which many contribute are better than those supplied at one man’s cost; for where there are many, each individual, it may be argued, has some portion of virtue and wisdom, and when they have come together, just as the multitude becomes a single man with many feet and many hands and many senses, so also it becomes one personality as regards the moral and intellectual faculties. This is why the general public is a better judge of the works of music and those of the poets, because different men can judge a different part of the performance, and all of them all of it. [loeb_subsection_5] But the superiority of good men over the mass of men individually, like that of handsome men, so it is said, over plain men and of the works of the painter’s art over the real objects, really consists in this, that a number of scattered good points have been collected together into one example; since if the features be taken separately, the eye of one real person is more beautiful than that of the man in the picture, and some other feature of somebody else. It is not indeed clear whether this collective superiority of the many compared with the few good men can possibly exist in regard to every democracy and every multitude, and perhaps it may be urged that it is manifestly impossible in the case of some—for the same argument would also apply to animals, yet what difference is there,practically, between some multitudes and animals?—but nothing prevents what has been said from being true about some particular multitude. [loeb_subsection_6] One might therefore employ these considerations to solve not only the previously stated difficulty but also the related question, over what matters is the authority of the freemen, the mass of the citizens, to extend (using that expression to denote those who are not rich nor possessed of any distinguishing excellence at all)? For it is not safe for them to participate in the highest offices (for injustice and folly would inevitably cause them to act unjustly in some things and to make mistakes in others), but yet not to admit them and for them not to participate is an alarming situation, for when there are a number of persons without political honors and in poverty, the city then is bound to be full of enemies. It remains therefore for them to share the deliberative and judicial functions. [loeb_subsection_7] For this reason Solon and certain other lawgivers appoint the common citizens toProbably words meaning these functions and to have fallen out. the election of the magistrates and the function of calling them to audit, although they do not allow them to hold office singly. For all when assembled together have sufficient discernment, and by mingling with the better class are of benefit to the state, just as impure food mixed with what is pure makes the whole more nourishing than the small amount of pure food alone; but separately the individual is immature in judgement. [loeb_subsection_8] This arrangement of the constitution is however open to question in the first place on the ground that it might be held that the best man to judge which physician has given the right treatment is the man that is himself capable of treating and curing the patient of his present disease, and this is the man who is himself a physician;