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ARISTOTLE'S MORALS AND POLITICS 95
citizen is not one of "the best", he is denied the fall rights
of citizenship and has no share in the government of the
State. Moreover, he is not entitled or enabled fully to share
in that good life of the spirit and the intellect which his
loyal participation in the State renders possible; possible,
that is to say, for others. Thus Aristotle's doctrine of the
good life for the ordinary man is directed, so far as its
social bearing is concerned, to securing that the ordinary
man shall so conduct himself as to render possible the
achievement of a different kind of good life by nonordinary
men.
Aristotle's Political Ideal. There is, in fact, a two-way
process of mutual sustainment between the two sorts of
good life and the individuals who are respectively engaged
in living them. On the one hand, as we have seen, the
achievement of the specific good of the citizen, which con-
sists in loyalty to the State's institutions and willingness to
abide by its laws, is necessary to the achievement of the
it is the business of
higher good by the few; on the other,
the few in their character of statesmen so to direct the
education and mould the ideals of the many, that they will
be willing and able to contribute by living the lives of
good and contented citizens to the achievement of the
higher good by the statesmen in their capacity of cultured
gentlemen. Cultured gentlemen, in other words, must,
in their capacity as statesmen, produce a certain character
in the citizens whom they educate and rule, as a condition
of the completion of their own characters and the perfec-
tion of their own lives as cultured gentlemen. The following
quotation from Professor A. E. Taylor admirably summarizes
Aristotle's political ideal: "Aristotle's political ideal is
that of a small but leisured and highly cultivated aristocracy,
without large fortunes or any remarkable differences
in material wealth, free from the spirit of adventure
and enterprise, pursuing the arts and sciences quietly
while its material needs are supplied by the labour of a
class excluded from citizenship, kindly treated but without