Politics: A Treatise on Government

Opening of the book

A TREATISE ON GOVERNMENT
By Aristotle
Translated From The Greek Of Aristotle By William
Ellis, A.M.
London &.Toronto Published By J M Dent & Sons Ltd. &.In
New York By E. P. Dutton &. Co
First Issue Of This Edition 1912 Reprinted 1919, 1923, 1928
INTRODUCTION
BIBLIOGRAPHY
A TREATISE ON GOVERNMENT

INTRODUCTION
The Politics of Aristotle is the second part of a
treatise of which the Ethics is the first part. It looks
back to the Ethics as the Ethics looks forward to the
Politics. For Aristotle did not separate, as we are
inclined to do, the spheres of the statesman and the
moralist. In the Ethics he has described the character
necessary for the good life, but that life is for him
essentially to be lived in society, and when in the last
chapters of the Ethics he comes to the practical
application of his inquiries, that finds expression not in
moral exhortations addressed to the individual but in a
description of the legislative opportunities of the
statesman. It is the legislator's task to frame a society
which shall make the good life possible. Politics for
Aristotle is not a struggle between individuals or classes
for power, nor a device for getting done such elementary
tasks as the maintenance of order and security without too
great encroachments on individual liberty. The state is "a
community of well-being in families and aggregations of
families for the sake of a perfect and self-sufficing
life." The legislator is a craftsman whose material is
society and whose aim is the good life.
In an early dialogue of Plato's, the Protagoras,
Socrates asks Protagoras why it is not as easy to find
teachers of virtue as it is to find teachers of
swordsmanship, riding, or any other art. Protagoras'
answer is that there are no special teachers of virtue,
because virtue is taught by the whole community. Plato and

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