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described in a paragraph that shows that he is no ordinary ‘man’. But the initial ‘definition’ is apolitical statement, and can be associated with a famous passage from Aristotle in his Politics. Thepassage presents a formal definition and names ‘man’ – as zoon politikon – as the creature that iscapable of speech. Such a ‘man’ is therefore able to communicate and discuss issues without recourseto force, and has the capacity to construct a civilized polity. Aristotle’s definition distinguishesbetween ‘man’, defined as a speaker, and two other alternatives. Those who are in the category ‘notmen’ are described, on the one hand as ‘barbarians’, and on the other hand as ‘gods’. The key passageis in Book 1 of the Politics where Aristotle is summarizing his opening discussion and movingtowards some sort of definition of man as a ‘political animal’:Hence it is evident that the state is a creation of nature, and that man is by nature a politicalanimal. And he who by nature and not by mere accident is without a state, is either a bad man[barbarian] or above humanity [a god]; he is like the ‘Tribeless, lawless, hearthless one’,(Homer, Iliad IX 63) whom Homer denounces - the natural outcast is forthwith a lover of war;he may be compared to an isolated piece at draughts.Now, that man is more of a political animal than bees or any other gregarious animalsis evident. Nature, as we often say, makes nothing in vain, and man is the only animal whohas the gift of speech. And whereas mere voice is an indication of pleasure or pain, and istherefore found in other animals (for their nature attains to the perception of pleasure and painand the intimation of them to one another, and no further), the power of speech is intended toset forth the expedient and the inexpedient, and therefore likewise the just and the unjust. Andit is characteristic of man that he alone has any sense of good and evil, of just and unjust, andthe like, and the association of living beings who have this sense makes a family and a state. 14My assertion that this passage played an important role in the impulse behind Wordsworth’stheory of poetry will not be seen as too eccentric by classicists appreciative of Aristotelian modes ofthinking, or to Renaissance scholars. But it will not be so transparent to Romantic critics who believein Abrams’ definition of Wordsworth as an expressive visionary, freed from the constraints ofclassical form. Wordsworth’s republican sympathies, however, led him to appreciate the influence ofthe Roman moralists and their political ideology, and key words and passages in Aristotle’s Politics(and his Ethics and Rhetoric) become enshrined in later classical republican political theory. 15 Thefirst point made by Aristotle in the above passage is that ‘the state is a creation of nature’; it arises outof a natural process in which men come together cooperatively as social beings. The means by whichthey do this is through their capacity for speech. ‘Speech’ in contrast to the utterances of animals is anactivity that has a specific end. It enables men to define ‘the expedient and the inexpedient’, the ‘justand the unjust’. This gives man alone the ‘sense of good and evil’, and the ability to make up a familyand, by extension of this principle, a ‘city’ and a ‘state’.Although Wordsworth was initially taught political theory by Beaupuy (though at the time hefailed to consolidate his learning), he became a revolutionary enthusiast later, inspired by Grégoire’smillennial expectations. In Paris he witnessed the debates of the French republicans as they attemptedto define a new French constitution in late 1792, at a time when classical models were again being14 Aristotle, The Politics. Bk 1 1253a. Trans Jowett. An alternative translation for lines 2-3 above reads ‘He whois incapable of society, or so complete as not to want it, is a beast or a god’.15 All three works were in Wordsworth’s library at Rydal Mt.149