been made, then a certain number of shoes may be received by the builder from the shoemaker in exchange. for a house, or (what is the same thing) the price of the shoes or of the house may be exchanged for the house or the shoes.1 We might make Aristotle's adjustments easier to understand if we supposed that the regard he insists on paying to the respective status of the producers was a regard paid to the respective skill and difficulty of their trade. But except in regard to money there is no clear analysis of economic facts in this much tortured passage. Aristotle is doing his best to find the principle of the Mean even in matters of trade, and to bring sense out of common sayings, by explaining them in the light of his philosophy. As the Mean essentially rests on a basis of popular belief, we could not expect to find any economical categories that were not largely if not wholly historical. There seems no fair analogy between the ethical mean and the market value of an article,-except that the latter will sometimes be like the former in being a mean between two extreme estimates, a buyer's low one and a seller's high one. III. Aristotle's conception of the State would in any case make it difficult to draw the line between historical and economical categories; it involves a justification by logic of the growth of the historical categories. A man 3 is, as rational, social; his power of speech is sufficient presumption of it; and other facts are present in abundance to confirm the presumption. In the first place he is born able and usually willing to pair with another human being. The family is a 1 Eth., V. (5). 2 For a general account of the Politics see Erdmann, Hist. of Philos., vol. i. § 89, and for a special account of the economical views of Aristotle, see Mr. D. G. Ritchie's article in Palgrave's Dict. of Polit. Econ., and Prof. Elster's article in the Handwörterbuch d. Staatswissenschaften. The latter gives the literature of the subject, such as it is. 3 Pol., I. 1. (The observation of modern doctors that madmen can seldom combine,and two warders can usually cope with twenty madmen, seems to show that it is reason and not speech that is essential.) 4 Eth., IX. (12), 7. For the whole subject see "Aristotle's conception of the State," by Prof. A. C. Bradley in Hellenica, 181 seq. form of society that not only comes first in time but (in Aristotle's opinion) remains a permanent element in the larger forms of society. In the second place, after the family we have the village, which grows out of the family, and is as it were a family of families. But unlike the family it is not itself a permanent element; it gives place to the State, which grows out of the village.' Maine's aphorism that Society develops from the family to the tribe and from the tribe to the State is in substance Aristotle's. Now the last stage in this development, though last in time, is so far from being farther away from nature, that it alone represents the true nature of man. "Nature" is rather the full-grown organism than the undeveloped germ; and it is the State and not the family, still less the individual, that is the "limit of independence." The earlier forms of community come into being for simple preservation of bare life, but they develope into a community which serves not only that purpose but the higher ends of life. They, and especially the State, make it possible for man to show all that is in him." Aristotle makes therefore no attempt like Plato's to construct an ideal State from men in a state of nature, as they were in the City of Pigs. He recognises more expressly and consistently than Plato the necessity of a basis of unwritten law, a definite national character that has grown with many generations. The State is not a deliberate contrivance to suit a known purpose of usefulness; it results from one of those natural tendencies which insists on being satisfied whether useful or not. Connected with this view (of the spontaneous growth of political institutions) is Aristotle's respect for the "fixed beliefs" of the vulgar. A belief that is universal must (he thinks) have some truth in it, whether in ethics or in politics. He seems to have been the first to formulate clearly the doctrine that the multitude have a collective wisdom not possessed by the individuals separately. There is no nearer approach to this in Plato than the notion of 1 In Rome we have the Municipality as a permanent element. 4 Pol., III. 6: τοὺς γὰρ πολλοὺς ὧν ἕκαστός ἐστιν οὐ σπουδαῖος ἀνὴρ, ὅμως ἐνδέχεται συνελθόντας εἶναι βελτίους ἐκείνων, οὐχ ὡς ἕκαστον ἀλλ ̓ ὡς σύμπαντας. binding customs (in the Laws) and the notion of principles dyed into a community, like colours into a web (in the Republic). Aristotle's case, however, is not strengthened by his illustrations. "As in a joint feast, every one contributes his portion of virtue and wisdom." They become as one man, but a man with many organs of sense and understanding instead of few," and hence are a good judge, for example, of poetry and art in general. Taking the common judgment as represented in the current axioms of morality and politics, he professes a deep respect for it even in these regions. This is plainly the case in his Ethics, for the definition of virtue makes it "a habit of choice lying in a middle [or regulated] state of the passions, a middle state relative to the agent concerned, and a habit fixed by reason in the way in which the ideally wise man would fix it."1 This is a re-statement in philosophical language of the thought which is common to the whole Greek world, that "measure is the best." Not that this notion is introduced into the ethics of Aristotle from without; it is Greek as the whole philosophy of Aristotle is Greek, because the philosopher was unconsciously formulating the thoughts of his own people and times. The Greek view of nature was in a sense artistic. The Greeks found in nature a number of elements and a principle that seemed to set them in order. This is exactly what Aristotle presents to us in his Metaphysics and Psychology and in his Economics (so far as we have traced it), and not least in his Ethics and Political Philosophy. In ethics if we ask what is to fix the limit or mean that brings order into the disorderly elements, in short, how reason is to limit passion, we are told that the limit is determined by the man of practical wisdom; and it is clear from what is said and not said about the latter that he performs his high function simply because he has been trained by the State in the traditional morality of his people and has a clearer view and a better grasp of their ideals than the average man who follows them unconsciously or unintelligently. We see this view illustrated by the 10th book of the 1 Eth., II. (6), 15. Ethics, in which Aristotle gives his view of the relation of Ethics to Politics. There are three ways, he says, in which men become good; they are good by nature, or by precept, or by custom. The first is a happy chance that we cannot control; the second is uncertain unless the minds of the hearers have been prepared beforehand so that the seed is sown on good ground. Hence it is the last way, the way of custom, that must be used by the legislator. Nothing but a general and thorough system of moral education will give us a virtuous community. We must have laws for the whole of life from infancy upwards. In other words, we must conquer human nature by obeying it and reform human society by adopting the very methods by which society has grown up to what it is, and using not only its written but its unwritten laws.3 2 The difficulty that meets Aristotle at this point is the difficulty that meets every one who tries to show that whatever is, is in a sense right. If Justice differs in different States, is it not in all equally conventional or equally natural? His answer is that there is one best form of government and the justice that prevails in that is the natural one, being that for which men are born and to which they ought to come. While he allows that none of the existing States are perfect, he contends that the development of the State from family and village was quite natural. He distinguishes too the right sort of States (those in which the government aims at the public advantage) from the wrong (in which it seeks the advantage of individuals)." It is clear then that their laws and customs must, according to his own admissions, have a great deal of substantial truth in them; and accordingly his severest criticisms are directed against those who leave the path of history and experience and, like Plato, construct constitutions on abstract principles. First and foremost he objects to Plato's Republic that it turns back the hands of the clock. It tries to perfect the unity of the State by destroying the variety in the life of its members. By abolishing the family it reduces the State itself to a family, and the next step would be 1 X. (9). 2 Eth., X. (9), 6–9. 9 ib., 14; cf. VIII. (13), 5. Pol., III. 6, II. to reduce it from a family to an individual.1 Unity must not be uniformity. Though the criticism is not wholly justified, it is true that in his own Ideal State Aristotle not only preserves the historical elements which disappear in the Platonic State, or in its select circles, but finds a place for various social groups (including clubs and partnerships) ranked under the general head of "friendships," and serving as a bridge between the exclusiveness of the family and the comprehensiveness of the State. There is no such continuity in Plato. The two books of Aristotle on Friendship (Ethics, VIII., IX.) are really a treatise on the different forms of social intercourse and communion, from the highest (the friendship between two good men) to mere attachments from pleasure and partnerships from utility. He does not consider society by any means as constituted by this last class of associations, and the motive of self-advancement is never regarded by him as at all commendable, still less as worthy of dominating an entire society of human beings. Self-love, he says, is natural and in moderation pardonable, but it is never admirable except in the good man, regarded as loving the goodness that is in himself, which he will value above all things else in the world. A civil society, the dominant aim of whose members was commercial ambition, would be to him a degradation of the State. There is not even the notion that every man must earn his own livelihood by his own labour. His philosophy reduces the economical element in Society to a very humble place. On the other hand he fully allows for human weakness. If all men were good, Society would have all its wants supplied. It may be allowed, he says, that friendship dispenses with law, yet true friendship is only between the good; the good are rare, and a friendship on the part 1 Pol., II. 1 : γινομένη τε μία μᾶλλον, οἰκία μὲν ἐκ πόλεως, ἄνθρωπος δ ̓ ἐξ οἰκίας ἔσται. 2 Eth., VIII. (9) and (10). See Mr. E. Poste's note (p. 97 of his transl., 2nd. ed.) on Aristotle's 'AOŋvaiwv #odireia, Section LII. [díkai] ἐρανικαὶ καὶ κοινωνικαὶ. 3 Pol., II. 2. money. 5 IX. 8, 7. It is immoderate, he adds, when it means love of |