No doubt, Aristotle adds, we are all agreed that the fair claims of all ought to be respected, and that justice lies in the observance of such claims; but after all it is over these very claims that the quarrels arise, and who is to enforce the necessary compromise?[1]
These remarks, apparently so trite, have yet a value for all time, and for all states of society, for they are based upon facts of human nature which do not often find such clear expression. And when we apply them to that form of State which Aristotle was analysing, we feel their force yet more strongly. In our large modern State parties and interests are not brought into direct and (so to speak) personal collision; or the heat of conflict in great cities is tempered by the comparative coolness of the numerous rural population. But in the small Greek city the conflicting interests were always in immediate contact with each other; the rich man daily met the poor man and scorned him; the poor man daily saw the rich man and hated him. In each the sense of justice and proportion was continually being injured by those little annoyances which are so apt to spoil the best natures, just as an organ of sight or hearing may become dulled by being constantly brought to bear on something which irritates it. No wonder that the fine sense of the Greeks for order and proportion should in this world of politics have lost its keenness; no wonder that the reasonableness of Solon and the Athenians, and that the practical good sense of
- ↑ Politics, 1301 A and B.
