The most interesting is a passage in the _Politics_ (iv. 3, cp. p. 13), where Aristotle is speaking of the multiplicity of forms of government, and showing how a great number of varieties may nevertheless be brought under a few classes or types. He illustrates the point from the musical Modes, observing that all constitutions may be regarded as either oligarchical (government by a minority) or democratical (government by the majority), just as in the opinion of some musicians ([Greek: hôs phasi tines]) all modes are essentially either Dorian or Phrygian. What, then, is the basis of this grouping of certain modes together as Dorian, while the rest are Phrygian in character? According to Westphal it is a form of the opposition between the true Hellenic music, represented by Dorian, and the foreign music, the Phrygian and Lydian, with their varieties. Moreover, it is in his view virtually the same distinction as that which obtains in modern music between the Minor and the Major scales[1]. This account of the matter, however, is not supported by the context of the passage. Aristotle draws out the comparison between forms of government and musical modes in such a way as to make it plain that in the case of the modes the distinction was one of pitch ([Greek: tas suntonôteras ... tas d' aneimenas kai malakas]). The Dorian was the best, because the highest, of the lower keys,--the others being Hypo-dorian (in the earlier sense, immediately below Dorian), and Hypo-phrygian--while Phrygian was the first of the higher series which took in Lydian and Mixo-lydian. The division would be aided, or may even have been suggested, by the circumstance that it nearly coincided with the favourite contrast of Hellenic and 'barbarous' modes[2]. There is another passage, however, which can hardly be reconciled with a classification according to pitch alone. In the chapters dealing with the ethical character of music Aristotle dwells (as will be remembered) upon the exciting and orgiastic character of the Phrygian mode, and notices its especial fitness for the dithyramb. This fitness or affinity, he says, was so marked that a poet who tried to compose a dithyramb in another mode found himself passing unawares into the Phrygian (_Pol._ viii. 7). It is natural to understand this of the use of certain sequences of intervals, or of cadences, such as are characteristic of a 'mode' in the modern sense of the word, rather than of a change of key. If this is so we may venture the further hypothesis that the Phrygian music, in some at least of its forms, was distinguished not only by pitch, but also by the more or less conscious use of scales which differed in type from the scale of the Greek standard system.