Such is the Superman of Aristotle.
VIII. Politics
1. COMMUNISM AND CONSERVATISM
From so aristocratic an ethic there naturally follows (or was the sequence the other way?) a severely aristocratic political philosophy. It was not to be expected that the tutor of an emperor and the husband of a princess would have any exaggerated attachment to the common people, or even to the mercantile bourgeoisie; our philosophy is where our treasure lies. But further, Aristotle was honestly conservative because of the turmoil and disaster that had come out of Athenian democracy; like a typical scholar he longed for order, security, and peace; this, he felt, was no time for political extravaganzas. Radicalism is a luxury of stability; we may dare to change things only when things lie steady under our hands. And in general, says Aristotle, “the habit of lightly changing the laws is an evil; and when the advantage of change is small, some defects whether in the law or in the ruler had better be met with philosophic toleration. The citizen will gain less by the change than he will lose by acquiring the habit of disobedience.”60 The power of the law to secure observance, and therefore to maintain political stability, rests very largely on custom; and “to pass lightly from old laws to new ones is a certain means of weakening the inmost essence of all law whatever.”61 “Let us not disregard the experience of ages: surely, in the multitude of years, these things, if they were good, would not have remained unknown.”62
“These things,” of course, means chiefly Plato’s communistic republic. Aristotle fights the realism of Plato about universals, and idealism of Plato about government. He finds many dark spots in the picture painted by the Master. He does not relish the barrack-like continuity of contact to which Plato apparently condemned his guardian philosophers; conservative though he is, Aristotle values individual quality, privacy, and liberty above social efficiency and power. He would not care to call every contemporary brother or sister, nor every elder person father or mother; if all are your brothers, none is; and “how much better it is to be the real cousin of somebody than to be a son after Plato’s fashion!”63 In a state having women and children in common, “love will be watery . . . . Of the two qualities which chiefly inspire regard and affection—that a thing is your own, and that it awakens real love in you—neither can exist in such a state” as Plato’s.64
Perhaps there was, in the dim past, a communistic society, when the family was the only state, and pasturage or simple tillage the only form of life. But “in a more divided state of society,” where the division of labor into unequally important functions elicits and enlarges the natural inequality of men, communism breaks down because it provides no adequate incentive for the exertion of superior abilities. The stimulus of gain is necessary to arduous work; and the stimulus of ownership is necessary to proper industry, husbandry and care. When everybody owns everything nobody will take care of anything. “That which is common to the greatest number has the least attention bestowed upon it. Everyone thinks chiefly of his own, hardly ever of the public, interest.”65 And “there is always a difficulty in living together, or having things in common, but especially in having common property. The partnerships of fellow-travellers” (to say nothing of the arduous communism of marriage), “are an example to the point; for they generally fall out by the way, and quarrel about any trifle that turns up.”66
“Men readily listen” to Utopias, “and are easily induced to believe that in some wonderful manner everybody will become everybody’s friend, especially when some one is heard denouncing the evils now existing, . . . which are said to arise out of the possession of private property. These evils, however, arise from quite another source—the wickedness of human nature.”67 Political science does not make men, but must take them as they come from nature.68
And human nature, the human average, is nearer to the beast than to the god. The great majority of men are natural dunces and sluggards; in any system whatever these men will sink to the bottom; and to help them with state subsidies is “like pouring water into a leaking cask.” Such people must be ruled in politics and directed in industry; with their consent if possible, without it if necessary. “From the hour of their birth some are marked out for subjection, and others for command.”69 For he who can foresee with his mind is by nature intended to be lord and master; and he who can work only with his body is by nature a slave.”70 The slave is to the master what the body is to the mind; and as the body should be subject to the mind, so “it is better for all inferiors that they should be under the rule of a master.”71 The slave is a tool with life in it, the tool is a lifeless slave.” And then our hard-hearted philosopher, with a glimmer of possibilities which the Industrial Revolution has opened to our hands, writes for a moment with wistful hope: “If every instrument would accomplish its own work, obeying or anticipating the will of others, . . . if the shuttle would weave, or the plectrum touch the lyre, without a hand to guide them, then chief workmen would not need assistants, nor masters slaves.”72
This philosophy typifies the Greek disdain for manual labor. Such work in Athens had not become so complicated as it is today, when the intelligence demanded in many manual trades is at times much greater than that required for the operations of the lower middle class, and even a college professor may look upon an automobile mechanic (in certain exigencies) as a very god; manual work was then merely manual, and Aristotle looked down upon it, from the heights of philosophy, as belonging to men without minds, as only fit for slaves, and only fitting men for slavery. Manual labor, he believes, dulls and deteriorates the mind, and leaves neither time nor energy for political intelligence; it seems to Aristotle a reasonable corollary that only persons of some leisure should have a voice in government.73 “The best form of state will not admit mechanics to citizenship . . . . At Thebes there was a law that no man could hold office who had not retired from business ten years before.”74 Even merchants and financiers are classed by Aristotle among slaves. “Retail trade is unnatural, . . . and a mode by which men gain from one another. The most hated sort of such exchange is . . . usury, which makes a gain out of money itself, and not from its natural use. For money was intended as an instrument of exchange, and not as the mother of interest. This usury (tokos), which means the birth of money from money, . . . is of all modes of gain the most unnatural.”75 Money should not breed. Hence “the discussion of the theory of finance is not unworthy of philosophy; but to be engaged in finance, or in money-making, is unworthy of a free man.”76
2. MARRIAGE AND EDUCATION
Woman is to man as the slave to the master, the manual to the mental worker, the barbarian to the Greek. Woman is an unfinished man, left standing on a lower step in the scale of development.77 The male is by nature superior, and the female inferior; the one rules and the other is ruled; and this principle extends, of necessity, to all mankind. Woman is weak of will, and therefore incapable of independence of character or position; her best condition is a quiet home life in which, while ruled by the man in her external relations, she may be in domestic affairs supreme. Women should not be made more like men, as in Plato’s republic; rather the dissimilarity should be increased; nothing is so attractive as the different. “The courage of a man and that of a woman are not, as Socrates supposed, the same: the courage of a man is shown in commanding; that of a woman in obeying . . . . As the poet says, ‘Silence is a woman’s glory.’”78