just discussed deny the reality of the whole, Plato’s view,
on the contrary, denies the reality of the parts. For him the
individual is nothing, the State everything. The individual
is absolutely sacrificed to the State. He exists onlyforthe
State, and thus Plato makes the mistake of setting up the
State as sole end and denying that the {324} individual is
an end in himself. Plato imagined that the State is a ho-
mogeneous unity, in which its parts totally disappear. But
the true view is that the State, as an organism, is a unity
which contains heterogeneity. It is coherent, yet heteroge-
neous. And Plato makes the same mistake in his view of
the family as in his view of the individual. The family, Aris-
totle thinks, is, like the individual, a real part of the social
whole. It is an organism within an organism. As such, it is
an end in itself, has absolute rights, and cannot be obliter-
ated. But Plato expressly proposed to abolish the family in
favour of the State, and by suggesting community of wives
and the education of children in State nurseries from the
year of their birth, struck a deadly blow at an essential part
of the State organization. Aristotle thus supports the insti-
tution of family, not on sentimental, but upon philosophic
grounds.
Aristotle gives no exhaustive classification of different kinds
of State, because forms of government may be as various
as the circumstances which give rise to them. His classi-
fication is intended to include only outstanding types. He
finds that there are six such types, of which three are good.
The other three are bad, because they are corruptions of
the good types. These are (1) Monarchy, the rule of one
man by virtue of his being so superior in wisdom to all
his fellows that he naturally rules them. The corruption of
Monarchy is (2) Tyranny, the rule of one man founded not
on wisdom and capacity, but upon force. The second good
form is (3) Aristocracy, the rule of the wiser and better few,
of which the corrupt form is (4) Oligarchy, the rule of the
rich and powerful few. (5) Constitutional Republic or Tim-
ocracy arises {325} where all the citizens are of fairly equal
capacity,i.e., where no stand-out individual or class exists,
so that all or most take a share in the government. The cor-
responding corrupt form is (6) Democracy, which, though
it is the rule of the many, is more especially characterized
as being the rule of the poor.Unlike Plato, Aristotle depicts no ideal State. No single
State, he thinks, is in itself the best. Everything must de-
pend upon the circumstances. What is the best State in
one age and county will not be the best in another. More-
over, it is useless to discuss Utopian constitutions. What
alone interests the sane and balanced mind of Aristotle is
the kind of constitution which we may hope actually to re-
alize. Of the three good forms of government he considers
that monarchy is theoretically the best. The rule of a sin-
gle perfectly wise and just man would be better than any
other. But it has to be given up as impracticable, because
such perfect individuals do not exist. And it is only among
primitive peoples that we find the hero, the man whose
moral stature so completely exalts him above his fellows
that he rules as a matter of course. The next best State
is aristocracy. And last, in Aristotle’s opinion, comes con-
stitutional republic, which is, however, perhaps the State
best suited to the special needs and level of development of