Page:Illustrations of the history of medieval thought and learning.djvu/251

Rh in the book of which those events were so impotent illustrations.

The Defensor Pacis starts from the same beginning as Dante and Peter du Bois had chosen for the first principle of their political treatises; namely, that government is established tor the purpose of maintaining peace. Marsiglio traces the origin of civil association in close conformity with the teaching of the Politics of Aristotle : he adopts the definition that the state exists in order that men may live well; and to live well he finely explains in the sense that men may have leisure for liberal tasks, such as are those of the virtues of the soul as well of thought as of action. Turning then to the various modes of government by which this end is sought to be attained,—these too Marsiglio enumerates according to Aristotle's classification,—he decides that a perhaps a kingly rule is the more perfect. The qualified terms in which he expresses this preference at once distinguish our author from the common rank of imperialistic writers, especially when we remember that his own book is dedicated to the emperor. His postulates of the character and attributes of the prince, his definitions of law and of the nature of the state itself, are indeed quite different from theirs. That which he insists upon as the very basis of the social organism is a principle which civilists were inclined altogether to ignore. The sovereignty of the state, he held, rested with the people; by it properly are the laws made, and to it they owe their validity. From the nation itself proceeds all right and all power; it is the authoritative lawgiver among