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If then it appears that we may become good through the instrumentality of laws, of course whoso wishes to make men better by a system of care and training must try to make a Legislator of himself; for to treat skilfully just any one who may be put before you is not what any ordinary person can do, but, if any one, he who has knowledge; as in the healing art, and all others which involve careful practice and skill.
1181a] Will not then our next business be to inquire from what sources, or how one may acquire this faculty of Legislation; or shall we say, that, as in similar cases, Statesmen are the people to learn from, since this faculty was thought to be a part of the Social Science? Must we not admit that the Political Science plainly does not stand on a similar footing to that of other sciences and faculties? I mean, that while in all other cases those who impart the faculties and themselves exert them are identical (physicians and painters for instance) matters of Statesmanship the Sophists profess to teach, but not one of them practises it, that being left to those actually engaged in it: and these might really very well be thought to do it by some singular knack and by mere practice rather than by any intellectual process: for they neither write nor speak on these matters (though it might be more to their credit than composing speeches for the courts or the assembly), nor again have they made Statesmen of their own sons or their friends.
One can hardly suppose but that they would have done so if they could, seeing that they could have bequeathed no more precious legacy to their communities, nor would they have preferred, for themselves or their dearest friends, the possession of any faculty rather than this.
Practice, however, seems to contribute no little to its acquisition; merely breathing the atmosphere of politics would never have made Statesmen of them, and therefore we may conclude that they who would acquire a knowledge of Statesmanship must have in addition practice.
But of the Sophists they who profess to teach it are plainly a long way off from doing so: in fact, they have no knowledge at all of its nature and objects; if they had, they would never have put it on the same footing with Rhetoric or even on a lower: neither would they have conceived it to be “an easy matter to legislate by simply collecting such laws as are famous because of course one could select the best,” as though the selection were not a matter of skill, and the judging aright a very great matter, as in Music: for they alone, who have practical knowledge of a thing, can judge the performances rightly or understand with what means and in what way they are accomplished, and what harmonises with what: the unlearned must be content with being able to discover whether the result is good or bad, as in painting.
1181b] Now laws may be called the performances or tangible results of Political Science; how then can a man acquire from these the faculty of Legislation, or choose the best? we do not see men made physicians by compilations: and yet in these treatises men endeavour to give not only the cases but also how they may be cured, and the proper treatment in each case, dividing the various bodily habits. Well, these are thought to be useful to professional men, but to the unprofessional useless. In like manner it may be that collections of laws and Constitutions would be exceedingly useful to such as are able to speculate on them, and judge what is well, and what ill, and what kind of things fit in with what others: but they who without this qualification should go through such matters cannot have right judgment, unless they have it by instinct, though they may become more intelligent in such matters.
Since then those who have preceded us have left uninvestigated the subject of Legislation, it will be better perhaps for us to investigate it ourselves, and, in fact, the whole subject of Polity, that thus what we may call Human Philosophy may be completed as far as in us lies.
First then, let us endeavour to get whatever fragments of good there may be in the statements of our predecessors, next, from the Polities we have collected, ascertain what kind of things preserve or destroy Communities, and what, particular Constitutions; and the cause why some are well and others ill managed, for after such inquiry, we shall be the better able to take a concentrated view as to what kind of Constitution is best, what kind of regulations are best for each, and what laws and customs.
To this let us now proceed.
P 2, l. 16. For this term, as here employed, our language contains no equivalent expression except an inconvenient paraphrase.
There are three senses which it bears in this treatise: the first (in which it is here employed) is its strict etymological signfication “The science of Society,” and this includes everything which can bear at all upon the well-being of Man in his social capacity, “Quicquid agunt homines nostri est farrago libelli.” It is in this view that it is fairly denominated most commanding and inclusive.
The second sense (in which it occurs next, just below) is “Moral Philosophy.” Aristotle explains the term in this sense in the Rhetoric (1 2) [Greek: hae peri ta aethae pragmateia aen dikaion esti prosagoreuen politikaen]. He has principally in view in this treatise the moral training of the Individual, the branch of the Science of Society which we call Ethics Proper, bearing the same relation to the larger Science as the hewing and squaring of the stones to the building of the Temple, or the drill of the Recruit to the manoeuvres of the field. Greek Philosophy viewed men principally as constituent parts of a [Greek: polis], considering this function to be the real End of each, and this state as that in which the Individual attained his highest and most complete development.
The third sense is “The detail of Civil Government,” which Aristotle expressly states (vi. 8) was the most common acceptation of the term.
P 3, l. 23. Matters of which a man is to judge either belong to some definite art or science, or they do not. In the former case he is the best judge who has thorough acquaintance with that art or science, in the latter, the man whose powers have been developed and matured by education. A lame horse one would show to a farmer, not to the best and wisest man of one’s acquaintance; to the latter, one would apply in a difficult case of conduct.
Experience answers to the first, a state of self-control to the latter.
P 3, l. 35. In the last chapter of the third book of this treatise it is said of the fool, that his desire of pleasure is not only insatiable, but indiscriminate in its objects, [Greek: pantachothen].
P 4, l. 30. [Greek: ‘Archae] is a word used in this treatise in various significations. The primary one is “beginning or first cause,” and this runs through all its various uses.
