Page:The Criterion - Volume 4.djvu/19

Rh tions—like those of our Puritans or of America to-day—are comparatively useless to that end. He insists (V., 1) on the importance of education, which should be regulated by the State, to impress on each citizen the peculiar ethos proper to the polity. The immediate success and the ultimate failure with which this aim was pursued by pre-war Germany is a double confirmation of Aristotle’s wisdom. The State must mould, but it must mould wisely, and history warns us that militaristic states have ultimately failed (IV., 14).

In his approval of the rule of the superman—of unique virtue and wisdom—Aristotle agreed with Carlyle; but, unlike Carlyle, he regarded such a thing as a purely ideal conception (III., 13), and his best practicable ideal is some form of constitutional democracy. For democracy seems to be the only form of government suitable to large states (III., 15)}—a fortiori to our huge modern nation-states. The best constitution i1s one in which the middle class is predominant, because the middle class is more reasonable, more ready to act constitutionally, and in its nature more permanent than the classes of the very rich or the very poor (VI., 11). From this point of wview Aristotle would have held that Victorian England under Palmerston was politically sounder than England wunder Lloyd George.

If a large number of persons are excluded from all honours or are very poor, the State will have enemies within itself (III., 11). They should therefore have some share in the Government, though in the best state the unfit will be excluded from full political rights (III., 5). Now our modern franchise is the equivalent of the direct participation in government by the Greeks of the old city- states; and it is quite certain that Aristotle would not have approved of universal adult suffrage even under modern conditions. He would regard the franchise less as a right than as a duty to be exercised for the benefit of