Artisans, and in general all who earn their living by the labour of their hands, are not to be allowed to be citizens. “One cannot practise virtue, if one leads the life of an artisan, or of one who labours for pay,” says Aristotle. An ethical valuation of labour as such is still something unknown to him, even though he conceives of happiness as “activity in accordance with the law of excellence.” Plato and he are still entirely under the influence of the ancient view that only the “free” man can have full value as a man. In details of the ideal of the State, however, the two part company, and Aristotle argues against Plato, though, unfortunately, just those parts of the _Politics_ in which he sketches his ideal State have not come down to us complete. The main difference is that Aristotle keeps closer than Plato to the historically given. He builds his State upon the family; Plato makes the State into a family. In his _Republic_ the free men live with property, wives, and children owned in common. They are to possess nothing as their own, so that they may not by private interests be held back from working for the general welfare. Moreover, the general welfare allows the State to breed its citizens systematically. He prescribes the connections which men and women are to form, and permits only such as allow the expectation of a new generation which is sound both in body and mind. The offspring of unions not approved by the authorities are either to be killed before birth, or got rid of by starvation. Aristotle contents himself with guaranteeing the quality of the offspring by legal regulation of the age for marriage. Women may get married at eighteen, men not till they are thirty-seven. Moreover, marriages are to take place preferably in winter, and as far as possible, when the wind is in the north. [pg 050] In what, then, does the good consist which is to be realized by this civilized State? To this decisive question Aristotle and Plato have in reality only the answer that it is meant to make it possible for a number of its members, viz. the “free” men, to devote themselves entirely to their own bodily and mental culture free from care about material things, and to take the lead in public affairs. It is not established with a view to the production of anything ethical in any deeper sense, nor for the sake of an ideal of progress on lines which could be described as in any sense great and noble. Nowhere do the characteristic limitations of ancient ethics reveal themselves so clearly as in the poverty of their ideal of the State. The ethical valuation of man as man has not yet been reached. Hence the State has for its object, not the growth to perfection of all, but only that of a particular class.