[1334a] but not for the sake of world-wide despotism; and thirdly to hold despotic power over those who deserve to be slaves. [loeb_subsection_15] Experience supports the testimony of theory, that it is the duty of the lawgiver rather to study how he may frame his legislation both with regard to warfare and in other departments for the object of leisure and of peace. Most military states remain safe while at war but perish when they have won their empire; in peace-time they lose their keen temper, like iron.i.e. an iron blade when not used loses keenness and has to be re-tempered. The lawgiver is to blame, because he did not educate them to be able to employ leisure.
[loeb_subsection_16] And since it appears that men have the same end collectively and individually, and since the same distinctive aim must necessarily belong both to the best man and to the best government, it is clear that the virtues relating to leisure are essentiali.e. to the state as well as to the individual.; since, as has been said repeatedly, peace is the end of war, leisure of business. [loeb_subsection_17] But the virtues useful for leisure and for its employment are not only those that operate during leisure but also those that operate in business; for many of the necessaries must needs be forthcoming to give us opportunity for leisure. Therefore it is proper for the state to be temperate,brave and enduring; since, as the proverb goes, there is no leisure for slaves, but people unable to face danger bravely are the slaves of their assailants. [loeb_subsection_18] Therefore courage and fortitude are needed for business, love of wisdom for leisure, temperance and justice for both seasons, and more especially when men are at peace and have leisure; for war compels men to be just and temperate, whereas the enjoyment of prosperity and peaceful leisure tend to make them insolent. [loeb_subsection_19] Therefore much justice and much temperance are needed by those who are deemed very prosperous and who enjoy all the things counted as blessings, like the persons, if such there be, as the poets say, Hes. WD 170 ff. that dwell in the Islands of the Blest; these will most need wisdom, temperance and justice, the more they are at leisure and have an abundance of such blessings. It is clear therefore why a state that is to be happy and righteous must share in these virtues; for if it is disgraceful to be unable to use our good things, it is still more disgraceful to be unable to use them in time of leisure, and although showing ourselves good men when engaged in business and war, in times of peace and leisure to seem no better than slaves. [loeb_subsection_20] Therefore we must not cultivate virtue after the manner of the state of Sparta.
The superiority of the Spartans over other races does not lie [1334b] in their holding a different opinion from others as to what things are the greatest goods, but rather in their believing that these are obtained by means of one particular virtue; yet because they both deem these things and their enjoyment to be greater goods than the enjoyment of the virtues The end of this sentence and the beginning of the next appear to have been lost.
and that it is to be practised for its own sake is manifest from these considerations; [loeb_subsection_21] but it must now be considered how and by what means this will come about. Now we have indeed previously decided that it requires nature and habit and reason, and among these, what particular quality of nature men ought to possess has been defined previously; but it remains to consider whether men ought to be educated first by means of the reason or by the habits. For between reason and habit the most perfect harmony ought to exist, as it is possible both for the reason to have missed the highest principle and for men to have been as wrongly trained through the habits. [loeb_subsection_22] This therefore at all events is clear in the first place, in the case of men as of other creatures, that their engendering starts from a beginning, and that the end starts from a certain beginning that is another end,A conjectural addition to the text gives the end to which a certain beginning leads is itself the beginning of another end. The active use of the reason is the end (i.e. the completion and the purpose) of the birth and growth of the human animal. and that reason and intelligence are for us the end of our natural development, so that it is with a view to these ends that our engendering and the training of our habits must be regulated. [loeb_subsection_23] And secondly, as soul and body are two, so we observe that the soul also has two parts, the irrational part and the part possessing reason, and that the states which they experience are two in number,the one being desire and the other intelligence; and as the body is prior in its development to the soul, so the irrational part of the soul is prior to the rational. And this also is obvious, because passion and will, and also appetite,These three emotions are subdivisions of desire above. exist in children even as soon as they are born, but it is the nature of reasoning and intelligence to arise in them as they grow older. Therefore in the first place it is necessary for the training of the body to precede that of the mind, and secondly for the training of the appetite to precede that of the intelligence; but the training of the appetite must be for the sake of the intellect, and that of the body for the sake of the soul.
[loeb_section_14] [loeb_subsection_1] Inasmuch therefore as it is the duty of the lawgiver to consider from the start how the children reared are to obtain the best bodily frames, he must first pay attention to the union of the sexes, and settle when and in what condition a couple should practise matrimonial intercourse. In legislating for this partnership he must pay regard partly to the persons themselves and to their span of life, so that they may arrive together at the same period in their ages, and their powers may not be at discord through the man being still capable of parentage and the wife incapable, or the wife capable and the man not (for this causes differences and actual discord between them), [loeb_subsection_2] and also he must consider as well the succession of the children, for the children must neither be too far removed in their ages from the fathers (since elderly fathers get no good from their children’s return of their favors, nor do the children from the help they get from the fathers),