truly to exist when it is sufficiently large to realise the good life, — when it rises beyond the mere life of the village to the higher life of the State, — so it ceases to be a useful and beautiful State when it is too large to be easily taken in by the eye and mind of its members. And Aristotle is not writing vaguely or loosely here; he means something definite, as he invariably does. He tells us in the same passage that the citizens ought to know each others characters, if they are to decide suits and to elect magistrates wisely; and also that they ought to be able to recognise foreign visitors and residents readily, so as to keep them outside of their own citizen-body, and to maintain their pure State character undeteriorated.
Aristotle is here, as usual in the Politics, only reflecting the normal phenomena of Greek political life; he is discarding the exceptional and (as he would call them) the unnatural tendencies of many States, and especially of the great commercial cities, such as the Athens of his day, and many of the great Greek colonies. He is picturing an ideal State, but he is copying its features from those of the Greek πόλις in its most typical form, indulging its most natural instincts. The true πόλις was, as we have seen, an independent and self-sufficing organism; it had its own tone and character, which its system of education was to keep up; and for
πλήθους ὑπερβολὴ πρὸς αὐτάρκειαν ζωῆς εὐσύνοπτος." Politics, iv. (vii. ) 4 fin. I have ventured to insert the word "higher" in quoting Professor Jowett's translation; see Mr. Newman's remarks on this chapter, in his first volume, pp. 313, 314.
