Aristotle
excluding the mass of inhabitants from the citizenship. For the
purpose to be accomplished by the political union, is, the assuring
of happiness to every individual citizen, which is to be effected by
implanting habits of virtue in every citizen. Whoever therefore is
incapable of acquiring habits of virtue, is disqualified from
becoming a citizen. But every man whose life is spent in laborious
avocations, whether of husbandry, of trade, or of manufacture,
becomes thereby incapable of acquiring habits of virtue, and cannot
therefore be admitted to the citizenship. No man can be capable of
the requisite mental culture and tuition, who is not exempted from
the necessity of toil, enabled to devote his whole time to the
acquisition of virtuous habits, and subjected from his infancy to a
severe and systematic training. The exclusion of the bulk of the
people from civil rights is thus founded, in the mind of Aristotle,
on the lofty idea which he forms of individual human perfection,
which he conceives to be absolutely unattainable unless it be made
the sole object of a man's life. But then he takes especial care that
the education of his citizens shall be really such as to compel them
to acquire that virtue on which alone their pre-eminence is built. If
he exempts them from manual or money-getting labours, he imposes upon
them an endless series of painful restraints and vexatious duties for
the purpose of forming and maintaining their perfection of character.
He allows no luxury or self-indulgence, no misappropriation of time,
no ostentatious display of wealth or station. The life of his select
citizens would be such as to provoke little envy or jealousy, among
men of the ordinary stamp. Its hard work and its strict discipline
would appear repulsive rather than inviting: and the pre-eminence of
strong and able men, submitting to such continued schooling, would
appear well deserved and hardly earned.
Oligarchical reasoners in modern times employ the bad part of
Aristotle's principle without the good. They represent the rich and
great as alone capable of reaching a degree of virtue consistent with
the full enjoyment of political privileges: but then they take no
precautions, as Aristotle does, that the men so preferred shall
really answer to this exalted character. They leave the rich and
great to their own self-indulgence and indolent propensities, without
training them by any systematic process to habits of superior virtue.
So that the select citizens on this plan are at the least no better,
if indeed they are not worse, than the remaining community, while
their unbounded **indulgences excite either undue envy or
undue admiration, among the excluded multitude. The select citizens
of Aristotle are both better and wiser than the rest of their
community: while they are at the same time so hemmed in and
circumscribed by severe regulations, that nothing except the
perfection of their character can appear worthy either of envy or
admiration. Though therefore these oligarchical reasoners concur with
Aristotle in sacrificing the bulk of the community to the
pre-eminence of a narrow class, they fail of accomplishing the end for
which alone he pretends to justify such a sacrifice--the formation of
a few citizens of complete and unrivalled virtue.
The arrangements made by Aristotle for the good government of his
aristocratical citizens among themselves, are founded upon principles
of the most perfect equality. He would have them only limited in
number, for in his opinion, personal and familiar acquaintance among
them all is essentially requisite to good government (vii. 4. 7). The
principal offices of the State are all to be held by the aged
citizens: the military duties are to be fulfilled by the younger
citizens. The city altogether, with the territory appertaining to it,
must be large enough to be [Greek: au)ta/rkês]: but it must not be so
extensive as to destroy personal intimacy among the citizens. A very
large body are, in Aristotle's view, incapable of discipline or
regularity.
To produce a virtuous citizen, _nature_, _habit_, and _reason_ must
coincide. They ought to be endued with virtues qualifying them both
for occupation and for leisure: with courage, self-denial ([Greek:
karteri/a]), and fortitude, to maintain their independence: with
justice and temperance, to restrain them from abusing the means of
enjoyment provided for them: and with philosophy or the love of
contemplative wisdom and science, in order to banish ennui, and
render the hours of leisure agreeable to them (vii. 13. 17). They are
to be taught that their hours of leisure are of greater worth and
dignity than their hours of occupation. Occupation is to be submitted
to for the sake of the quiet enjoyment of leisure, just as war is
made for the sake of procuring peace, and useful and necessary
employments undertaken for the sake of those which are honourable
(vii. 13. 8). Aristotle greatly censures (see vii. 2. 5) (as indeed
Plato had done before him) the institutions of Lacedæmon, as being
directed exclusively to create excellent warriors, and to enable the
nation to rule over foreigners. This (he says) is not only not the
right end, but is an end absolutely pernicious and culpable. To
maintain a forcible sovereignty over free and equal foreigners, is
unjust and immoral: and if the minds of the citizens be corrupted
with this collective ambition and love of power, it is probable that
some individual citizen, taught by the education of the State to
consider power as the first of all earthly ends, will find an
opportunity to aggrandize himself by force or fraud, and to establish
a tyranny over his countrymen themselves (viii. 13. 13). The
Lacedæmonians conducted themselves well and flourished under their
institutions, so long as they were carrying on war for the
enlargement of their dominion: but they were incapable of tasting or
profiting by peace: they were not educated by their legislator so as
to be able to turn leisure to account ([Greek: ai)/tios d' o(
nomothe/tês, ou) paideu/sas du/nasthai schola/zein]--vii. 13. 15).
The education of the citizen is to commence with the body: next the
irrational portion of the soul is to be brought under
discipline--that is, the will and the appetites, the concupiscent and
irascible passions: thirdly, the rational portion of the soul is to
be cultivated and developed. The habitual desires are to be so moulded
and tutored as to prepare them for the sovereignty of reason, when
the time shall arrive for bringing reason into action (vii. 13. 23).
They are to learn nothing until five years old (vii. 15. 4), their
diversions are to be carefully prepared and presented to them,
consisting generally of a mimicry of subsequent serious occupations
(vii. 15. 15): and all the fables and tales which they hear recited
are to be such as to pave the way for moral discipline (_ib._); all
under the superintendence of the Pædonom. No obscene or licentious
talk is to be tolerated in the city (vii. 15. 7), nor any indecent
painting or statue, except in the temples of some particular Deities.
No youth is permitted to witness the recitation either of iambics or
of comedy (vii. 15. 9), until he attains the age which qualifies him
to sit at the public tables. Immense stress is laid by the
philosopher on the turn of ideas to which the tender minds of youth
become accustomed, and on the earliest combinations of sounds or of
visible objects which meet their senses (vii. 15. 10). [Greek: Pro\s
pa/sas duna/meis kai\ te/chnas e)stin a(\ dei= propaideu/esthai kai\
proethi/zesthai pro\s ta\s e(ka/stôn e)rgasi/as, ô(/ste dê=lon o(/ti
kai\ pro\s ta\s tê=s a)retê=s pra/xeis] (viii. 1. 2).
All the citizens in Aristotle's republic are to be educated according
to one common system: each being regarded as belonging to the
commonwealth more than to his own parents. This was the practice at
Lacedæmon, and Aristotle greatly eulogizes it (viii. 1. 3).
Aristotle does not approve of extreme and violent bodily training,
such as would bring the body into the condition of an athlete: nor
does he even sanction the gymnastic labours imposed by the
Lacedæmonian system, which had the effect of rendering the Spartans
"brutal of soul," for the purpose of exalting their courage ([Greek:
oi( La/kônes--thêriô/deis a)perga/zontai toi=s po/nois, ô(s tou=to
ma/lista pro\s a)ndrei/an su/mpheron]). He remarks, first, that
courage is not the single or exclusive end to be aimed at in a civil
education: next, that a savage and brutal soul is less compatible
with exalted courage than a gentle soul, trained so as to be
exquisitely sensible to the feelings of shame and honour (viii. 3.
3-5). The most sanguinary and unfeeling among the barbarous tribes,
he remarks, were very far from being the most courageous. A man
trained on the Lacedæmonian system, in bodily exercises alone,
destitute even of the most indispensable mental culture (see below),
was a real [Greek: ba/nausos]--useful only for one branch of
political duties, and even for that less useful than if he had been
trained in a different manner.
Up to the age of 14, Aristotle prescribes ([Greek: ê(/bê] means 14
years of age--see vii. 15. 11) that boys shall be trained in gentle
and regular exercises, without any severe or forced labour. From 14
to 17 they are to be instructed in various branches of knowledge:
after 17, they are to be put to harder bodily labour and to be
nourished with a special and peculiar diet ([Greek:
a)nagkophagi/ais]). For how long this is to continue, is not stated.
But Aristotle insists on the necessity of not giving them at the same
time intellectual instruction and bodily training, for the one of
these, he says, counteracts and frustrates the other (viii. 4. 2-3).
The Lacedæmonians made music no part of their education: Isocrat.
Panathen. Or. xii. p. 375, B.; they did not even learn 'letters'
([Greek: gra/mmata]), but they are said to have been good judges of
music (viii. 4. 6). Aristotle himself however seems to think it next
to impossible that men who have not learned music can be good judges
(viii. 6. 1).
Aristotle admits that music may be usefully learnt as an innocent
pleasure and relaxation: but he chiefly considers it as desirable on
account of its moral effects, on the dispositions and affections. A
right turn of the pleasurable and painful emotions is, in his
opinion, essential to virtue: particular strains and particular
rhythms are naturally associated with particular dispositions of
mind: by early teaching, those strains and those rhythms which are
associated with temperate and laudable dispositions may be made more
agreeable to a youth than any others. He will like best those which
he hears earliest, and which he finds universally commended and
relished by those about him. A relish for the [Greek: o(moiô/mata] of
virtuous dispositions will tend to increase in him the love of virtue
itself (viii. 6. 5. 8).
Aristotle enjoins that the youth be taught to execute music
instrumentally and vocally, because it is only in this way that they
can acquire a good taste or judgment in music: besides which, it is
necessary to furnish boys with some occupation, to absorb their
restless energies, and there is none more suitable than music. Some
persons alleged that the teaching music as a manual art was banausic
and degrading, lowering the citizen down to the station of a hired
professional singer. Aristotle meets this objection by providing that
youths shall be instructed in the musical art, but only with the view
of correcting and cultivating their taste: they are to be forbidden
from making any use of their musical acquisitions, in riper years, in
actual playing or singing (viii. 6. 3). Aristotle observes, that