Page:Illustrations of the history of medieval thought and learning.djvu/228

210 mixed tradition of Hebrew and Christian ideas. He enriched it by proofs and lessons from classical history, but the stuff of his system remained the same as that current in the common speech of churchmen. It needed another classical influence to be brought to bear upon politics to raise them from a medley of empirical axioms to something approaching the character of a philosophical theory. This influence was found in the thirteenth century in the Politics of Aristotle: its first exponent is the greatest and profoundest teacher of the middle ages, saint Thomas Aquinas.

The Rule of Princes to which Aquinas devoted a special treatise, appears to him by no means a necessary form of government. Under the guidance of Aristotle, he approaches the subject with an entire absence of prejudice for it or any other form. The supreme power, he says, may be confided to many, to few, or to one; and each of these arrangements may be good or bad. He raises a presumption on quite general grounds that the unity of society—and this is the main object of government—is best secured by its subjection to a single ruler; but an aristocracy or a government by the people itself he allows to be equally legitimate, though not so well adapted to the necessities of the state. It is not the form but the character of the constitution that makes it good or bad. As monarchy is the most perfect form, so on the other hand its opposite, tyranny, is the most corrupt and abominable. Aquinas distinguishes, as minutely as