CONCLUDING REMARKS
IF THESE MATTERS AND THE VIRTUES, AND ALSO FRIENDSHIP and pleasure, have been dealt with sufficiently in outline, are we to suppose that our programme has reached its [1179b] end? Surely, as is said, in matters of action the end is not to contemplate and recognize each of them but rather to do them. With regard to virtue, then, it is not enough to know: we must try to have and to use it, or try any other way there may be of becoming good.
If arguments were in themselves enough to make men [5] upright, they would justly (in Theognis’ words) have won many great rewards, and such rewards should have been provided; but as things are, while they seem to have power to encourage and stimulate the generous-minded among the young, and to make a character which is gently born and a true lover of what is noble, ready to be possessed by virtue, [10] they are not able to encourage the many to gentlemanliness. For these by nature obey not modesty but fear, and do not abstain from base acts because of their ignobility but because of punishments: living by their emotions they pursue their own pleasures and the means to them, and avoid the [15] opposite pains, and have not even a conception of what is noble and truly pleasant, since they have never tasted it. What argument would remould such people? It is impossible, or not easy, to remove by argument the traits that have long since been fixed in the character; and perhaps we must be content if, when everything by which we are thought to [20] become upright is present, we get some hold on virtue.
Some think that we are made good by nature, others by habituation, others by teaching. Nature’s part plainly is not in our power: rather, as a result of some divine causes it is present in those who are truly fortunate. Argument and teaching are perhaps not powerful with all men: the soul of the pupil must first have been worked on by means of habits [25] for noble delight and hatred, like earth which is to nourish the seed. For he who lives by his emotions will not hear argument that discourages him, nor grasp it if he does; and how can we persuade one in such a state to change? In general emotion seems to yield not to argument but to force. [30] The character, then, must somehow already be related to virtue, loving what is noble and being vexed at what is ignoble.
It is difficult to get from youth up a correct training for virtue if one has not been brought up under correct laws; for to live temperately and with endurance is not pleasant to most people, especially when they are young. That is why their nurture and occupations should be fixed by law; for they will not be painful when they have become customary. [1180a] But perhaps it is not enough that when they are young they should get the correct nurture and attention: since they must, even when they are grown up, practise and be habituated to them, we shall need laws for this as well, and generally speaking for the whole of life; for most people obey necessity [5] rather than argument, and punishments rather than what is noble.
This is why some think that legislators ought to invite men to virtue and encourage them to act for the sake of the noble, on the supposition that those who have been uprightly moulded by the formation of habits will listen to such things; and that punishments and penalties should be imposed on those who disobey and are less well endowed by nature, [10] and that the incurable should be completely banished. An upright man (they think), since he lives for what is noble, will obey reason, while a base man, whose desire is for pleasure, is corrected by pain like a beast of burden. This is why they say the pains should be those that are most contrary to the pleasures such men cherish.
[15] If (as we have said) the man who is to be good must be nobly trained and habituated, and go on to spend his time in upright occupations and neither voluntarily nor involuntarily perform base actions, and if this can be brought about if men live in accordance with a sort of intelligence and correct order, provided this has strength—if this be so, the paternal [20] command has not the required strength or compulsive power, nor in general has the command of one man, unless he be a king or something similar; but the law has compulsive power, while it is at the same time an account proceeding from a sort of wisdom and intelligence. And while people hate men who set themselves contrary to their impulses even if they do so correctly, the law when it commands what is upright is not burdensome.
[25] In the Spartan State alone, or almost alone, the legislator seems to have taken care of nurture and occupations: in most States such matters have been neglected, and each man lives as he wants to, Cyclops-fashion, ‘to his own wife and children dealing law’.1 Now it is best that there should be a [30] common and correct care for such matters; but if they are neglected by the community it would seem fitting for each man to help his own children and friends towards virtue, and that they should be able to do this or at least to choose to.2
It would seem from what has been said that one can do this better if he makes himself capable of legislating. For common care plainly is effected by laws, and upright care by virtuous [1180b] laws—whether written or unwritten would seem to make no difference, nor whether they are laws providing for the education of individuals or of groups—any more than it does in the case of music or gymnastics and other such occupations. For [5] as in States laws and character have force, so in households do the words and the habits of the father, and the more so because of their kinship and his benefactions; for children start with a natural affection and disposition to obey. Further, individual education has an advantage over education in common, as individual medical treatment has; for while in general rest and abstinence from food are good for a man in a [10] fever, for a particular man they may not be; and a boxing instructor presumably does not prescribe the same style of fighting to all his pupils. It would seem, then, that the detail is worked out with more precision if the care is particular to individuals; for each person is more likely to get what suits his case.
But individuals3 can be best cared for by a doctor or gymnastic instructor or anyone else who has the universal [15] knowledge of what is good for everyone or for people of a certain kind (for the sciences both are said to be and are concerned with what is common); but there is perhaps no reason why some individual may be well cared for by an unscientific person who has studied precisely in the light of experience what happens in each case, just as some people seem to be their own best doctors, though they could give no [20] help to anyone else. Nonetheless, it will perhaps be agreed that if a man does want to become master of a craft or of a contemplative science he must go to the universal, and come to know it as well as possible; for, as we have said, it is with this that the sciences are concerned.
And surely he who wants to make men, whether many or few, better by his care must try to become capable of legislating, [25] if it is through laws that we can become good. For to get anyone whatever—anyone who is put before us—into the right condition is not for the first chance comer: if anyone can do it, it is the man who knows, just as in medicine and all other matters which give scope for care and wisdom.
Must we not, then, next examine whence or how one can [30] learn how to legislate? Is it, as in other cases, from politicians? After all, it was thought to be a part of the political art. Or is a difference apparent between the political art and the other sciences and skills? In the others the same people are found offering to teach the skills and exercising them—for instance, doctors or painters; but while the sophists profess [1181a] to teach politics, it is practised not by any of them but by the politicians, who would seem to do so by a certain capacity and experience rather than by thought; for they are not found either writing or speaking about such matters (though it were a nobler occupation perhaps than composing [5] speeches for the law-courts and the assembly), nor again are they found to have made politicians of their own sons or any other of their friends. But it was reasonable that they should if they could; for there is nothing better than such a capacity that they could leave to their States or could choose to have for themselves or, therefore, for those dearest to [10] them. Still, experience seems to contribute not a little; for otherwise they would not have become politicians by familiarity with politics—that is why it seems that those who aim at knowing about the art of politics need experience as well.
Those of the sophists who profess the art seem to be very far from teaching it. For, to put the matter generally, they do not even know what kind of thing it is nor what [15] kinds of things it is about—otherwise they would not have made it identical with rhetoric or even inferior to it, nor have thought it easy to legislate by collecting the laws that are thought well of. They say it is possible to select the best laws, as though even the selection did not demand judgement and as though correct assessment were not the greatest thing, as in matters of music. For while people experienced [20] in any discipline assess its products correctly and can judge by what means or how they are achieved and what harmonizes with what, the inexperienced must be content if they manage to see whether the product has been well or [1181b] ill made—as in the case of painting. Now laws are as it were the product of politics: how then can one learn from them to be a legislator, or assess which are best? Even medical men do not seem to be made by a study of text-books. Yet people try, at any rate, to state not only the treatments but also how particular classes of people can be cured and [5] should be treated, distinguishing the various states; but while this seems beneficial to experienced people, to the ignorant it is useless. Perhaps, then, while collections of laws and of constitutions may be serviceable to those who can consider them and assess what is done rightly or the contrary and what fits with what, those who go through such [10] collections without knowledge will not assess them rightly (unless it be spontaneously), though they may perhaps become more judicious in such matters.
Since our predecessors have left the subject of legislation unexamined, it is perhaps best that we should ourselves consider it, and in general the question of the constitution, in [15] order to complete to the best of our ability the philosophy of human nature. First, then, if any part has been discussed by earlier thinkers, let us try to review it; then in the light of the constitutions that have been collected let us consider what sorts of thing preserve and destroy States, and what sorts the particular kinds of constitution, and to what causes it is due [20] that some are rightly administered and others the contrary. When these things have been considered we shall perhaps be more likely to see which constitution is best, and how each must be ordered, and what laws and customs it must use. Let us make a beginning of our discussion.
1 Homer, Odyssey IX 114.
2 In the manuscripts the words ‘and … do this’ appear immediately after ‘… for such matters’ in 1180a30: following a suggestion of Bywater, we transpose them to follow ‘… towards virtue’ in 1180a32. (Bywater himself deletes the words and marks a lacuna after ‘… towards virtue’.)
3 Reading καθ᾽ ἕνα for καθ᾽ ἔν.