APPENDIX.

THE NATURE OF THE POLITICAL TREATISE.

THE Political Treatise of Aristotle is so important for the elucidation of Greek history and Greek philosophy, that it seems desirable to give some of the reasons which have led us to form the opinion we have expressed in the text (p. 140), at greater length than would be allowed by the limits of an ordinary note;-and the principal of them are accordingly here subjoined. At the same time, however satisfactory we may deem them, we cannot expect that they will appear at once equally conclusive to those who have been accustomed always to regard the work in a different light, and we would request such persons, after perusing the following note, to study the treatise itself, and then decide whether the form of its composition is, or is not, incompatible with any other view than the one we have taken of it.

I. In the third Book, the author, on the occasion of mentioning certain states where an executive power, almost supreme, was entrusted to one individual, although the rest of the institutions partook more or less of a democratic character, gives Epidamnus as an existing instance'. In the fifth Book, he has occasion again to refer to this functionary, but he speaks of his

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office as one which no longer existed. A revolution, gradual but complete, had in the interval been effected at Epidamnus. The constitution had acquired a completely popular character, and the office of Supreme Administrator had together with the other oligarchal features of the government, been swept away. That such blemishes as this would not have been left standing in a work published by the author himself, few persons will be inclined to question. Still it may be argued that although not published by him, it may yet have been in course of preparation for publication in its present form, and that its last finish, in which such incongruities would have been removed, may have been prevented by his death. But this argument may be shown to be inadmissible. In this same fifth Book there is a passage obviously written while the expedition and death of Dion the Syracusan, (which latter happened soon after the dethronement of Dionysius the tyrant by his agency,) was a subject of common talk and considered as an event of the day. "One cause of despotical governments being overthrown is," says Aristotle, "dissension among those parties in whose hands they are, as in the instance of Gelon's relations, and at the present time (kaì vûv) in that of Dionysius's.' Dion's death, which he mentions presently afterwards, took place in the first half of the year 353, B. C. Aristotle was at this time little more than thirty years of age, and was at Athens pursuing his studies under Plato. (See above, p. 11.) We cannot therefore suppose that the Politics is a work, the elaboration of which was cut short by the author's death, without at the same time supposing that this expression was by him suffered

Now

to stand for a period of more than thirty years, of which every succeeding one would render its impropriety more glaring.

II. In a passage of the first Book', in the course of an analysis of the different elements which enter into the Social Relation, the question is started whether the acquisition of external objects of desire, necessarily and in the nature of things is a part of the office of the master of a household. For the purpose of elucidating his views on this subject, the Author digresses into a general discussion of the question of Production ( KтηTIŃ), Some kinds of this he considers as pointed κτητική). out by Nature herself to Man;-the exercise of them is necessary to the supply of his natural wants in the Social State, and consequently, (this Social State itself being grounded in Nature,) the industrial tendency which prompts him to such exercise is to be regarded as analogous to those ordinary instincts which direct the animal creation to the particular regions that furnish the food required by their peculiar organization. But Production has a natural limit, and this limit is short of the extent to which the powers of Man are capable of carrying it. Its natural limit is the satisfaction of the natural wants of the Community, under the highest possible form of civilization. So soon as this limit is passed, Production changes its character. employment (épyov) then becomes the accumulation of means without reference to an end; and it assumes the character, according to the views of the ancients, of a spurious, unnatural, and sordid pursuit. To this species of Production, Aristotle proposes to appropriate the name

' p. 1256. col. a. lin. 4.

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of Acquisition ( xpημATIOTIKŃ). The same arguments (ή χρηματιστική). which prove that the former kind was, in the nature of things, part of the duty of the head of the Family, would show that this latter is not; and such is the conclusion to which Aristotle comes, and which he formally states (p. 1258. col. a. lin. 18).

But when we look to the place where this discussion commences, we see plainly that in the first draught of the text it could not have existed. Originally perhaps the passage (p. 1256. col. a. lin. 15) ran thus: ei yáp ἐστι τοῦ χρηματιστικοῦ θεωρῆσαι πόθεν χρήματα καὶ κτῆσις ἐσται, [ἡ χρηματιστικὴ τῆς οἰκονομικῆς μέρος ἂν εἴη.] But as this conclusion could not be assented to without a limitation, the writer subjoined the words which follow in the MSS. ἡ δὲ κτῆσις πολλὰ περιείληφε μέρη καὶ ὁ πλοῦτος, ὥστε πρῶτον ἡ γεωργικὴ πότερον μέρος τι τῆς χρηματιστικῆς, ἢ ἕτερον τι γένος, καὶ καθόλου ἡ περὶ τὴν τροφὴν ἐπιμέλεια καὶ κτῆσις, as a memorandum for himself of the form which the discussion necessary for explaining the nature of such limitations must take. Subsequently he expanded this germ into the essay (as we may almost call it) which extends from the words ἀλλὰ μὴν εἴδη γε πολλὰ τροφῆς (p. 1256. col. a. lin. 19) down to the formal restatement, with all its proper qualification, of the position contained in the words between brackets. Finally we may conjecture that some person into whose hands the MS. fell, sollicitous not to lose a line that had come from the pen of the great author, strung the original question, the memoranda, and the explanatory excursus together in a continuous series, and thus produced the strange confusion which we find in our manuscripts, where the grammatical construction and the scientific arrangement are equally violated.

That some such solution of the difficulties which meet us in this passage is likely to be the true one, is confirmed by the words which occur shortly after:1 φύσεως γὰρ ἐστιν ἔργον τροφὴν τῷ γεννηθέντι παρέχειν παντὶ γὰρ ἐξ οὗ γίνεται τροφὴ τὸ λειπόμενον ἐστιν. Now these words are nothing more than the substance of what is said more fully in an early part of the explanatory note: ἡ μὲν οὖν τοιάυτη κτῆσις ὑπ' αὐτῆς φαίνεται τῆς φύσεως διδομένη πᾶσιν, ὥσπερ κατὰ τὴν πρώτην γένεσιν εὐθύς, οὕτω καὶ τελειωθεῖσιν, καὶ γὰρ κατὰ τὴν ἐξ ἀρχῆς γένεσιν τὰ μὲν συνεκτίκτει τῶν ζῴων του σαύτην τροφὴν ὡς ἱκανὴν εἶναι μέχρις οὗ ἂν δύνηται αὐτὸ αὐτῷ πορίζειν τὸ γεννηθέν, οἷον ὅσα σκωληκοτοκεῖ ἡ φοτοκεῖ ὅσα δε ζωοτοκεῖ, τοῖς γενομένοις ἔχει τροφὴν ἐν αὐ τοῖς μέχρι τινός, τὴν τοῦ καλουμένου γάλακτος φύσιν. Yet that the former passage is not a condensation of the latter, put in for the purpose of reminding a reader, is manifest on the inspection of the context. As it stands, it is completely superfluous, and apparently unaccountable, except on the supposition that at the time it was written the long explanatory note did not exist.

III. In the third Book is proposed for discussion the question whether government by a Monarch on whom there is no constitutional check, or by a Code of Laws absolutely rigid and unchangeable, is the alternative to be preferred,-on the hypothesis that in the one case the laws, and in the other the autocrat, shall be the best conceivable. The heads of the arguments on both sides are given. But strangely enough, we find in this place, that immediately after the subject has been to all appearance concluded, it recom