Such a programme for a treatise on government might lead us to expect in
the Politics mainly a description of a Utopia or ideal state which
might inspire poets or philosophers but have little direct effect upon
political institutions. Plato's Republic is obviously impracticable, for
its author had turned away in despair from existing politics. He has no
proposals, in that dialogue at least, for making the best of things as
they are. The first lesson his philosopher has to learn is to turn away
from this world of becoming and decay, and to look upon the unchanging
eternal world of ideas. Thus his ideal city is, as he says, a pattern
laid up in heaven by which the just man may rule his life, a pattern
therefore in the meantime for the individual and not for the statesman.
It is a city, he admits in the Laws, for gods or the children of gods,
not for men as they are.
Aristotle has none of the high enthusiasm or poetic imagination of
Plato. He is even unduly impatient of Plato's idealism, as is shown
by the criticisms in the second book. But he has a power to see the
possibilities of good in things that are imperfect, and the patience of
the true politician who has learned that if he would make men what
they ought to be, he must take them as he finds them. His ideal
is constructed not of pure reason or poetry, but from careful and
sympathetic study of a wide range of facts. His criticism of Plato in
the light of history, in Book II. chap, v., though as a criticism it is
curiously inept, reveals his own attitude admirably: "Let us remember
that we should not disregard the experience of ages; in the multitude
of years, these things, if they were good, would certainly not have been
unknown; for almost everything has been found out, although sometimes
they are not put together; in other cases men do not use the knowledge
which they have." Aristotle in his Constitutions had made a study of one
hundred and fifty-eight constitutions of the states of his day, and the
fruits of that study are seen in the continual reference to concrete
political experience, which makes the Politics in some respects a
critical history of the workings of the institutions of the Greek city
state. In Books IV., V., and VI. the ideal state seems far away, and
we find a dispassionate survey of imperfect states, the best ways of
preserving them, and an analysis of the causes of their instability.
It is as though Aristotle were saying: "I have shown you the proper and
normal type of constitution, but if you will not have it and insist on
living under a perverted form, you may as well know how to make the best
of it." In this way the Politics, though it defines the state in the
light of its ideal, discusses states and institutions as they are.
Ostensibly it is merely a continuation of the Ethics, but it comes to
treat political questions from a purely political standpoint.