He must sow quarrels, and impoverish his subjects. He should keep them occupied in great works,
as the king of Egypt did in getting the pyramids built. He should give power to women and slaves,
to make them informers. He should make war, in order that his subjects may have something to do
and be always in want of a leader (1313a and b).
It is a melancholy reflection that this passage is, of the whole book, the one most appropriate to
the present day. Aristotle concludes that there is no wickedness too great for a tyrant. There is,
however, he says, another method of preserving a tyranny, namely by moderation and by seeming
religious. There is no decision as to which method is likely to prove the more successful.
There is a long argument to prove that foreign conquest is not the end of the State, showing that
many people took the imperialist view. There is, it is true, an exception: conquest of "natural
slaves" is right and just. This would, in Aristotle's view, justify wars against barbarians, but not
against Greeks, for no Greeks are "natural slaves." In general, war is only a means, not an end; a
city in an isolated situation, where conquest is not possible, may be happy; States that live in
isolation need not be inactive. God and the universe are active, though foreign conquest is
impossible for them. The happiness that a State should seek, therefore, though war may
sometimes be a necessary means to it, should not be war, but the activities of peace.
This leads to the question: how large should a State be? Large cities, we are told, are never well
governed, because a great multitude cannot be orderly. A State ought to be large enough to be
more or less self-sufficing, but not too large for constitutional government. It ought to be small
enough for the citizens to know each other's characters, otherwise right will not be done in
elections and lawsuits. The territory should be small enough to be surveyed in its entirety from a
hill-top. We are told both that it should be selfsufficient (1326b) and that it should have an export
and import trade (1327a), which seems an inconsistency.
Men who work for their living should not be admitted to citizenship. "Citizens should not lead the
life of mechanics or tradesmen, for such a life is ignoble and inimical to virtue." Nor should they
be husbandmen, because they need leisure. The citizens should own the property, but the
husbandmen should be slaves of a different race