Page:The City-State of the Greeks and Romans.djvu/86

62 were essentially seekers; and if in some paths of search they sought and never found, in the problems of social life at least they laid hold on a great prize, and did not underrate its value.

Nothing can be clearer to the reader of the Politics than Aristotle's conviction that no higher form of social union was possible than that of the City-State. Of Empire — of the subordination of several States to one ruling State — he has almost nothing to tell us; he must have looked on such a form of union as artificial and unnatural, and therefore as beyond the scope of his inquiry. Nor does he treat of Federation, or the union of several States under a common government for the common good; to his mind the City-State should need no help from other States, and in combining with them would only be surrendering a part of its own essential vitality. The ideal State must be wholly independent of others, wholly self-sufficing; it must be able to maintain its own character as a State, by itself and for itself, without aid or stimulus from without. Its beauty and its order are the result of its own natural growth, and must be secured and enhanced by purely natural means.

And here Aristotle does but reflect the inborn tendency of the Greeks to dislike all larger political unions; a tendency which, as we saw, was less strong, or at least less permanent, in the sister peninsula. To the Greek thinker, as to the ordinary Greek citizen, all federations were a step