The Basic Works of Aristotle (Modern Library Classics) (215 page)

8
     Next in order follows the right distribution of offices, their number,
(5)
their nature, their duties, of which indeed we have already spoken.
³⁶
No state can exist not having the necessary offices, and no state can be well administered not having the offices which tend to preserve harmony and good order. In small states, as we have already remarked,
³⁷
there must not be many of them,
(10)
but in larger there must be a larger number, and we should carefully consider which offices may properly be united and which separated.

First among necessary offices is that which has the care of the market; a magistrate should be appointed to inspect contracts and to maintain order.
(15)
For in every state there must inevitably be buyers and sellers who will supply one another’s wants; this is the readiest way to make a state self-sufficing and so fulfil the purpose for which men come together into one state.
³⁸
A second office of a similar kind undertakes the supervision and embellishment of public and private buildings,
(20)
the maintaining and repairing of houses and roads, the prevention of disputes about boundaries, and other concerns of a like nature. This is commonly called the office of City-warden,
(25)
and has various departments, which, in more populous towns, are shared among different persons, one, for example, taking charge of the walls, another of the fountains, a third of harbours. There is another equally necessary office, and of a similar kind, having to do with the same matters without the walls and in the country—the magistrates who hold this office are called Wardens of the country, or Inspectors of the woods.
(30)
Besides these three there is a fourth office of receivers of taxes, who have under their charge the revenue which is distributed among the various departments; these are called Receivers or Treasurers. Another officer registers all private contracts,
(35)
and decisions of the courts, all public indictments, and also all preliminary proceedings. This office again is sometimes subdivided, in which case one officer is appointed over all the rest. These officers are called Recorders or Sacred Recorders, Presidents, and the like.

Next to these comes an office of which the duties are the most necessary and also the most difficult,
(40)
viz. that to which is committed the execution of punishments, or the exaction of fines from those who are posted up according to the registers; and also the custody of prisoners.
[1322a]
The difficulty of this office arises out of the odium which is attached to it; no one will undertake it unless great profits are to be made, and any one who does is loath to execute the law. Still the office is necessary; for judicial decisions are useless if they take no effect; and if society cannot exist without them,
(5)
neither can it exist without the execution of them. It is an office which, being so unpopular, should not be entrusted to one person, but divided among several taken from different courts. In like manner an effort should be made to distribute among different persons the writing up of those who are on the register of public debtors.
(10)
Some sentences should be executed by the magistrates also, and in particular penalties due to the outgoing magistrates should be exacted by the incoming ones; and as regards those due to magistrates already in office, when one court has given judgement, another should exact the penalty; for example, the wardens of the city should exact the fines imposed by the wardens of the agora, and others again should exact the fines imposed by
them.
For penalties are more likely to be exacted when less odium attaches to the exaction of them; but a double odium is incurred when the judges who have passed also execute the sentence,
(15)
and if they are always the executioners, they will be the enemies of all.

In many places, while one magistracy executes the sentence, another has the custody of the prisoners, as, for example, ‘the Eleven’ at Athens. It is well to separate off the jailorship also,
(20)
and try by some device to render the office less unpopular. For it is quite as necessary as that of the executioners; but good men do all they can to avoid it, and worthless persons cannot safely be trusted with it; for they themselves require a guard, and are not fit to guard others.
(25)
There ought not therefore to be a single or permanent officer set apart for this duty; but it should be entrusted to the young, wherever they are organized into a band or guard, and different magistrates acting in turn should take charge of it.

These are the indispensable officers, and should be ranked first;—next in order follow others, equally necessary, but of higher rank,
(30)
and requiring great experience and fidelity. Such are the officers to which are committed the guard of the city, and other military functions. Not only in time of war but of peace their duty will be to defend the walls and gates,
(35)
and to muster and marshal the citizens. In some states there are many such offices; in others there are a few
only, while small states are content with one; these officers are called generals or commanders.
[1322b]
Again, if a state has cavalry or light-armed troops or archers or a naval force, it will sometimes happen that each of these departments has separate officers, who are called admirals, or generals of cavalry or of light-armed troops. And there are subordinate officers called naval captains, and captains of light-armed troops and of horse; having others under them:—all these are included in the department of war.
(5)
Thus much of military command.

But since many, not to say all, of these offices handle the public money, there must of necessity be another office which examines and audits them,
(10)
and has no other functions. Such officers are called by various names—Scrutineers, Auditors, Accountants, Controllers. Besides all these offices there is another which is supreme over them, and to this is often entrusted both the introduction and the ratification of measures, or at all events it presides, in a democracy,
(15)
over the assembly. For there must be a body which convenes the supreme authority in the state. In some places they are called ‘probuli’, because they hold previous deliberations, but in a democracy more commonly ‘councillors’.
³⁹
These are the chief political offices.

Another set of officers is concerned with the maintenance of religion; priests and guardians see to the preservation and repair of the temples of the gods and to other matters of religion.
(20)
One office of this sort may be enough in small places, but in larger ones there are a great many besides the priesthood; for example superintendents of public worship,
(25)
guardians of shrines, treasurers of the sacred revenues. Nearly connected with these there are also the officers appointed for the performance of the public sacrifices, except any which the law assigns to the priests; such sacrifices derive their dignity from the public hearth of the city. They are sometimes called archons, sometimes kings,
⁴⁰
and sometimes prytanes.
(30)

These, then, are the necessary offices, which may be summed up as follows: offices concerned with matters of religion, with war, with the revenue and expenditure, with the market, with the city, with the harbours, with the country; also with the courts of law,
(35)
with the records of contracts, with execution of sentences, with custody of prisoners, with audits and scrutinies and accounts of magistrates; lastly, there are those which preside over the public deliberations of the state. There are likewise magistracies characteristic of states which are peaceful and prosperous, and at the same time have a regard to good order: such as the offices of guardians of women,
guardians of the laws, guardians of children, and directors of gymnastics; also superintendents of gymnastic and Dionysiac contests, and of other similar spectacles.
[1323a]
Some of these are clearly not democratic offices; for example, the guardianships of women and children
⁴¹
—the poor,
(5)
not having any slaves, must employ both their women and children as servants.

Once more: there are three offices according to whose directions the highest magistrates are chosen in certain states—guardians of the law, probuli, councillors—of these, the guardians of the law are an aristocratical, the probuli an oligarchical, the council a democratical institution. Enough of the different kinds of offices.
(10)

¹
Bk. iv. 14–16.

²
Bk. v.

³
1318
^b
6–1319
^a
6.

⁴
Cp. iv. 1293
^b
34.

⁵
These questions are not actually discussed by A.

⁶
iv. 12.

⁷
Cp. iv. 1289
^b
20.

⁸
iv. 1291
^b
17–28, 1292
^b
25 sqq., 1296
^b
26–31.

⁹
Cp. iv. 1289
^a
1.

¹⁰
v. 1309
^b
18–1310
^a
36.

¹¹
Cp. Plato,
Rep.
viii. 557 sqq.

¹²
Cp. v. 1310
^a
31.

¹³
Cp. iv. 1298
^a
27.

¹⁴
Cp. iv. 1299
^b
32

¹⁵
Cp. iv. 1299
^b
38.

¹⁶
Cp. iv. 1291
^b
30.

¹⁷
Cp. iii. 1281
^a
14.

¹⁸
iv. 1292
^b
22–1293
^a
10.

¹⁹
Cp. iv. 1292
^b
25–33.

²⁰
Cp. iv. 1297
^b
6.

²¹
Cp. ii. 1274
^a
15.

²²
l. 6.

²³
Cp. ii. 1266
^b
21.

²⁴
v. 2–7, 1311
^a
22–1313
^a
16.

²⁵
Cp. iii. 1278
^a
27.

²⁶
Cp. iii. 1275
^b
35.

²⁷
CP. v. 1313
^b
32.

²⁸
Cp. Bk. v.

²⁹
Cp. v. 1313
^a
20–33.

³⁰
Cp. v. 1305
^a
3.

³¹
Cp. ii. 1273
^b
18.

³²
Cp. ii. 1263
^a
37.

³³
Cp. iv. 1289
^b
32–40.

³⁴
1320
^b
25.

³⁵
Cp. iii. 1278
^a
25.

³⁶
iv. 15.

³⁷
iv. 1299
^a
34–
^b
10.

³⁸
Cp. i. i252
^b
27;
Nic. Eth
v. 1134
^a
26; Pl.
Rep
ii. 369.

³⁹
Cp. iv. 1299
^b
31.

⁴⁰
Cp. iii. 1285
^b
23.

⁴¹
Cp. iv. 1300
^a
4.

1
     He who would duly inquire about the best form of a state ought first to determine which is the most eligible life; while this remains uncertain the best form of the state must also be uncertain; for,
(15)
in the natural order of things, those may be expected to lead the best life who are governed in the best manner of which their circumstances admit. We ought therefore to ascertain, first of all, which is the most generally eligible life, and then whether the same life is or is not best for the state and for individuals.
(20)

Assuming that enough has been already said in discussions outside the school concerning the best life, we will now only repeat what is contained in them. Certainly no one will dispute the propriety of that partition of goods which separates them into three classes,
¹
viz.
(25)
external goods, goods of the body, and goods of the soul, or deny that the happy man must have all three. For no one would maintain that he is happy who has not in him a particle of courage or temperance or justice or prudence, who is afraid of every insect which flutters past him, and will commit any crime, however great,
(30)
in order to gratify his lust of meat or drink, who will sacrifice his dearest friend for the sake of half-a-farthing, and is as feeble and false in mind as a child or a madman. These propositions are almost universally acknowledged as soon as they are uttered,
(35)
but men differ about the degree or relative superiority of this or that good. Some think that a very moderate amount of virtue is enough, but set no limit to their desires of wealth, property, power, reputation, and the like. To whom we reply by an appeal to facts,
(40)
which easily prove that
mankind do not acquire or preserve virtue by the help of external goods, but external goods by the help of virtue, and that happiness,
[1323b]
whether consisting in pleasure or virtue, or both, is more often found with those who are most highly cultivated in their mind and in their character, and have only a moderate share of external goods,
(5)
than among those who possess external goods to a useless extent but are deficient in higher qualities; and this is not only matter of experience, but, if reflected upon, will easily appear to be in accordance with reason. For, whereas external goods have a limit, like any other instrument,
²
and all things useful are of such a nature that where there is too much of them they must either do harm,
(10)
or at any rate be of no use, to their possessors, every good of the soul, the greater it is, is also of greater use, if the epithet useful as well as noble is appropriate to such subjects. No proof is required to show that the best state of one thing in relation to another corresponds in degree of excellence to the interval between the natures of which we say that these very states are states: so that,
(15)
if the soul is more noble than our possessions or our bodies, both absolutely and in relation to us, it must be admitted that the best state of either has a similar ratio to the other. Again, it is for the sake of the soul that goods external and goods of the body are eligible at all,
(20)
and all wise men ought to choose them for the sake of the soul, and not the soul for the sake of them.

Let us acknowledge then that each one has just so much of happiness as he has of virtue and wisdom, and of virtuous and wise action. God is a witness to us of this truth, for he is happy and blessed, not by reason of any external good, but in himself and by reason of his own nature.
(25)
And herein of necessity lies the difference between good fortune and happiness; for external goods come of themselves, and chance is the author of them, but no one is just or temperate by or through chance.
³
(30)
In like manner, and by a similar train of argument, the happy state may be shown to be that which is best and which acts rightly; and rightly it cannot act without doing right actions, and neither individual nor state can do right actions without virtue and wisdom. Thus the courage, justice,
(35)
and wisdom of a state have the same form and nature as the qualities which give the individual who possesses them the name of just, wise, or temperate.

Thus much may suffice by way of preface: for I could not avoid touching upon these questions, neither could I go through all the arguments affecting them; these are the business of another science.

Let us assume then that the best life, both for individuals and states,
(40)
is the life of virtue, when virtue has external goods enough for the performance of good actions.
[1324a]
If there are any who controvert our assertion, we will in this treatise pass them over, and consider their objections hereafter.