Page:The City-State of the Greeks and Romans.djvu/85

III harmonious relation of man to man in society — "the State develops virtues unknown, or imperfectly known, to the family and the village; justice, in the true sense, first appears in the State."

The same idea of the State is further enforced by the doctrine that the State is a natural growth, i.e. that it is not the artificial result of a convention or compact between individuals. It is the natural and inevitable result of man's desire to use his faculties to the best purpose, to force his way onwards to his appointed end. The family and the village could not realise that end for him; they limited and hampered his activity at every point, excepting so far as they enabled him to procure a bare subsistence. Not content with this he pushes upward with an unconscious growth like that of a plant, and at last produces a form of social existence in which all his needs can be satisfied. He is by nature meant to be a member of a State, and without the State he cannot fully realise his true nature. Here, as Mr. Newman admirably expresses it, "he breathes at last his native air, reaches his full stature, and attains the end of his, being. Society is no longer a warping and disturbing, but an elevating and ennobling influence." He only needs to perfect the State itself, — a process which neither Plato nor Aristotle believed to be complete in their day, if indeed it ever could be completed, — in order to raise human nature to the highest possible degree of perfection. It has been truly said that the Greeks