TWO:The final antithesis of conscious life is that between the398 individual and the state. In this sense, Aristotles Politics is the completion of his Ethics. It is only in a well-ordered community that moral habits can be acquired; and it is only in such a community that the best or intellectual life can be attained, although, properly speaking, it is not a social life. Nevertheless, the Politics, like every other portion of Aristotles system, reproduces within itself the elements of an independent whole. To understand its internal organisation, we must begin by disregarding Aristotles abortive classification (chiefly adapted from Plato) of constitutions into three legitimateMonarchy, Aristocracy, and Republic; and three illegitimateDemocracy, Oligarchy, and Tyranny. Aristotle distinguishes them by saying that the legitimate forms are governed with a view to the general good; the illegitimate with a view to the interests of particular classes or persons. But, in point of fact, as Zeller shows,291 he cannot keep up this distinction; and we shall better understand his true idea by substituting for it anotherthat between the intellectual and the material state. The object of the one is to secure the highest culture for a ruling caste, who are to abstain from industrial occupations, and to be supported by the labour of a dependent population. Such a government may be either monarchical or aristocratic; but it must necessarily be in the hands of a few. The object of the other is to maintain a stable equilibrium between the opposing interests of rich and poortwo classes practically distinguished as the few and the many. This end is best attained where supreme power belongs to the middle class. The deviations are represented by oligarchy and tyranny on the one side, and by extreme democracy on the other. Where such constitutions exist, the best mode of preserving them is to moderate their characteristic excess by borrowing certain institutions from the opposite form of government, or by modifying their own institutions in a conciliatory sense.Into the thousands their altimeter swung its indicator.
THREE:366The man who called himself Mr. Everdail nodded.
THREE:She came at length breathless with running to the end of the garden. A little green gate led to the lane which divided Lytton Avenue from the corner house. It was absolutely quiet there. Leona Lalage could catch just the faintest humming noise, then a glaring white eye flamed out.52
THREE:"Well, sir, I wanted to follow, as far as the German Authorities desire to allow it, the movements of the German armies, in order to give reliable information to the Netherland public, who take a great interest in your progress."
