Much consideration is given in the _Politics_ to the classification of the different types of constitution possible for the city-state. The current view was that there are three main types distinguished by the number of persons who form the sovereign political authority, monarchy, in which sovereign power belongs to a single person; oligarchy, in which it is in the hands of a select few; democracy, in which it is enjoyed by the whole body of the citizens. Aristotle observes, correctly, that the really fundamental distinction between a Greek oligarchy and a Greek democracy was that the former was government by the propertied classes, the latter government by the masses. Hence the watchword of democracy was always that all political rights should belong equally to all citizens, that of oligarchy that a man’s political status should be graded according to his "stake in the country." Both ideals are, according to him, equally mistaken, since the real end of government, which both overlook, is the promotion of the "good life." In a state which recognises this ideal, an aristocracy or government by the best, only the "best" men will possess the full rights of citizenship, whether they are many or few. There might even be a monarch at the head of such a state, if it happened to contain some one man of outstanding intellectual and moral worth. Such a state should be the very opposite of a great imperial power. It should, that its cultivation may be the more intensive, be as small as is compatible with complete independence of outside communities for its material and spiritual sustenance, and its territory should only be large enough to provide its members with the permanent possibility of ample leisure, so long as they are content with plain and frugal living. Though it ought not, for military and other reasons, to be cut off from communication with the sea, the great military and commercial high road of the Greek world, it ought not to be near enough to the coast to run any risk of imperilling its moral cultivation by becoming a great emporium, like the Athens of Pericles. In the organisation of the society care should be taken to exclude the agricultural and industrial population from full citizenship, which carries with it the right to appoint and to be appointed as administrative magistrates. This is because these classes, having no opportunity for the worthy employment of leisure, cannot be trusted to administer the state for the high ends which it is its true function to further.