3. You cannot argue from the accomplished fact the lawfulness of the means whereby it was accomplished. Nor do we say that every form of government, which succeeds in governing, was originally set up in justice; nor again that the success of its rule is necessarily due to the use of just means. The Committee of Public Safety in Paris in 1794 did manage to govern, but it was erected in blood, and it governed by an unscrupulous disregard of everybody's rights. All that we say is, that no distribution of civil power as a distribution, or no polity as a polity (s. iii., n. 5, p. 312), is unlawful, if by it the government can be carried on. And the reason is plain. For all that nature requires is that there should be an efficient civil authority, not that this man should have it, or that one man or other should have it all, or that a certain class in council assembled should engross it, or that all the inhabitants of the country should participate in it. Any one of these arrangements that will work, satisfies the exigency of nature for civil rule, and is therefore in itself a lawful polity. 4. Working, and therefore, as explained, lawful polities are as multitudinous as the species of animals. Besides those that actually are, there is a variety without end, as of animals, so of polities, that might be and are not. We can classify only the main types. We ground our classification upon Ar., _Pol._, III., vii., modernising it so as to take in forms of representative government, whereof Aristotle had no conception. (1) _Monarchy_, or the rule of the Single Person, in whose hands the whole power of the State is concentrated, e.g., Constantine the Great. (2) _Aristocracy_, or the rule of the Few, which will be either _direct_ or _representative_, according as either they themselves by their own votes at first hand, or representatives whom they elect, make the laws. (3) _Democracy_, or the rule of the Many, that is, of the whole community. Democracy, again, is either _direct_ (commonly called _pure_) or _representative_. The most famous approach in history to pure democracy is the government of Athens, B.C. 438-338. (4) _Limited Monarchy_. (a) _Monarchy with Aristocracy_, the government of England from 1688 to 1830. (b) _Monarchy with Democracy_.