Aristotle now takes one of the candidates for sovereignty which he had listed and discussed summarily in the last chapter, the mass of the people, and seems, at first blush, to be espousing a major democratic principle: ‘Many heads are better than one.’ There is, he argues, some advantage in giving the people political power, at least to the extent of allowing them to elect officials and scrutinize their conduct: for the fact is that collective decisions, even by persons not individually distinguished for practical wisdom (phronēsis), are commonly at least as good as those reached by a select group of ‘sound’ men. It is interesting to note that Aristotle here concedes, in the first paragraph, a degree of phronēsis and aretē (moral virtue) to the ordinary man; contrast Nicomachean Ethics, VI xiii, where both seem to require rare intellectual qualities (and cf. introduction to III iv).
Socrates and Plato had been inclined to argue that politics is or should be a skill, with recognized modes of procedure, a precise set of ends, and agreed criteria for assessing whether these ends have been achieved. Such a skill they believed to be a rare accomplishment, not to be found among the populace at large. In general terms, Aristotle shares these beliefs; hence his judicious recognition of the wisdom of collective decisions by the people may well seem more surprising than it really is. His point is not that collective decisions are or must be good because they are made by the people, who, being a majority, have some sort of entitlement to have their own way; it is that decisions about the ‘good’ life in a polis are analogous to those made by a skilled practitioner in an art or profession, but that to judge from experience they are as likely to be made correctly by the many as by the few. In this chapter, then, Aristotle merely recognizes a limited efficiency in popular judgement. For a discussion, see the reference to Braun’s first 1959 article in the second collection of essays in the Select Bibliographies.
Why is popular judgement efficient? Aristotle’s answer is brief and somewhat mechanical: one man judges one ‘part’ (of a work of art or political problem) better than others, and another man another part, so that the many collectively may judge better than an individual expert. Is it not also a matter of uncanny group-intuition? (Compare Plato’s recognition of the curious moral intuitions of even rogues, at Laws 950bc.) It is hard to resist quoting one of the stately nineteenth-century quotations Newman prints in his commentary (III 215): ‘Canning used to say that the House of Commons as a body had better taste than the man of best taste in it, and I am very much inclined to think that Canning was right’ (Lord Macaulay, Letter of February 1831).
Like its predecessor, this chapter concludes with a ringing declaration of faith in the rule of law; but the discussion of it is again brief and inconclusive.
1281a39 The other possibilities are to be discussed elsewhere;1 at the moment it would seem that one view put forward – namely that the mass of the people ought to be sovereign, rather than the best but few – is not without difficulty, but has perhaps some truth in it. For it is possible that the many, no one of whom taken singly is a sound man, may yet, taken all together, be better than the few, not individually but collectively, in the same way that a feast to which all contribute is better than one supplied at one man’s expense. For even where there are many people, each has some share of virtue and practical wisdom; and when they are brought together, just as in the mass they become as it were one man with many pairs of feet and hands and many senses, so also do they become one in regard to character and intelligence. That is why the many are better judges of works of music and poetry: some judge some parts, some others, but their collective pronouncement is a verdict upon all the parts. And it is this that gives sound men their superiority over any individual man from the masses. Handsome men differ from ugly, it is said, and paintings from actual objects, just because they draw together into one what was previously scattered here and there, though any one of the features taken separately, the eye of one man, some other part of another, might well be more handsome than in the picture.
1281b15 But it is not at all certain that this superiority of the many over the sound few is possible in the case of every people and every large number. There are some, by heaven, among whom it would be impossible: otherwise the theory would apply to wild animals – and yet some men are hardly any better than wild animals. But there is no reason why in a given case of a large number we should not accept the truth of the point we have made.
1281b21 These considerations enable us to solve the former problem,2 and also another and related question – in what spheres is this sovereignty of the free men, the mass of the citizens, to be exercised? We must remember that they are not men of wealth, and have no claim to virtue in anything. To let them share in the highest offices is to take a risk: inevitably, their unjust standards will cause them to commit injustice, and their lack of judgement will lead them into error. On the other hand there is a risk in not giving them a share, and in their non-participation, for when there are many who have no property and no honours they inevitably constitute a huge hostile element in the state. But it can still remain open to them to participate in deliberating and judging.
1281b32 It was for this reason that both Solon3 and some of the other lawgivers give to the people power to elect officials and to demand an account from them at the end of their tenure, but no right individually to hold such offices. This was on the principle that the whole body acting together has the necessary perception,4 even though each is individually only partly qualified to judge. By thus mixing with the better sort, they render good service in their states, in something like the way that a combination of coarse foods with refined renders the whole diet more nutritious than a small amount of the latter.
1281b38 But such an arrangement of the constitution raises a number of difficulties. First, the proper person to judge whether a piece of medical work has been properly done is the same sort of person as is actually engaged on such work, on curing the patient of his present sickness – in other words the medical practitioner himself. And this is equally true of the other skills and empirical crafts. As then it is among doctors that a doctor should give an account of himself, so also should other professional men among their peers. By doctor I mean not only the ordinary practitioner and the master-craftsman, but also those who have been trained in the art, such as are to be found in pretty well all skills. And we let these trained persons judge no less than we let the experts.
1282a7 Second, in the matter of elections the same would seem to apply. Choosing aright is a task for the experts – those in surveying choose surveyors, those in navigation choose navigators, and so on. Admittedly in some jobs and some skills you will find laymen who share in the choice, but not more than the experts. So it would seem that on this argument the mass of the people should not be given the sovereign power either of choosing officials or of calling them to account.
1282a14 Perhaps, however, not all these arguments are right. First, there is the argument which we used a while back5 – that provided the mass of the people is not too slave-like, each individual will indeed be a worse judge than the experts, but collectively they will be better, or at any rate no worse. Secondly, there are tasks of which the actual doer will be neither the best nor the only judge, cases in which even those who do not possess the skill form an opinion on the finished product. An obvious example is house-building: the builder can certainly form an opinion on a house, but the user, the household-manager, will be an even better judge. So too the user of a rudder, the helmsman, is a better judge of it than the carpenters who made it; and it is the diner not the cook that pronounces upon the merits of a dinner. I think perhaps these two arguments are sufficient to resolve the question.
1282a24 But there is another and connected difficulty. It seems odd that inferior persons should have sovereign control over more important matters than the respectable sort; yet the choice of officials and the scrutiny of their work are a very important matter indeed. But as we have said, in some constitutions they are assigned to the people, the assembly having sovereign control of all such matters; yet although members of the assembly, and also of the council, and of the panels of jurymen, are recruited on low property-qualifications and are of any age, nevertheless for treasury officials, generals, and the supreme offices a high property-qualification is demanded.
1282a32 This difficulty too can be met, and this practice6 too perhaps justified, by arguments similar to those which we have just used: it is not the individual juryman, councillor, or member of assembly who rules, but the court, the council and the people; and of these each individual mentioned – I mean the councillor, assembly-member and juryman – is a part. So it is quite just that the mass of the people should be in sovereign control of more important things, since people, council, and law-court all comprise many persons. And as for property-qualifications, the sum total of property owned by them is larger than that of those who, singly or with a few colleagues, hold the highest offices.
1282a41 These matters may be regarded as settled in that way; but we must look back at our original problem,7 from which nothing emerges so clearly as the fact that the laws, if rightly established, ought to be sovereign, and also that officials, whether individually or as a body, ought to have sovereign power to act in all those various matters about which the laws cannot possibly give detailed guidance; for it is never easy to frame general regulations covering every particular. We said ‘laws rightly established’, but we have not yet discovered what sort of laws these ought to be, so the old problem8 remains. For as constitutions vary, simultaneously and in like manner the laws too inevitably vary, and are sound or bad, just or unjust; but this much is clear, that the constitution must set the pattern for the laws. If however that is so, laws framed in accordance with one of the right types of constitution will inevitably be just, but if according to one of the deviations, unjust.9