is to be the standard of the distribution of political power, is
conceived sometimes as a good for the apprehension and attainment of
which "virtue" is necessary and sufficient (this is the principle of
aristocracy), and sometimes as a more complex good, which needs for
its attainment not only "virtue" but wealth and equality. This latter
conception is the principle on which the mixed constitution is based.
This in its distribution of political power gives some weight to
"virtue," some to wealth, and some to mere number. But the principle
of "ruling and being ruled by turns" is not really compatible with an
unmodified principle of "tools to those who can use them." Aristotle
is right in seeing that political government demands equality, not in
the sense that all members of the state should be equal in ability or
should have equal power, but in the sense that none of them can
properly be regarded simply as tools with which the legislator works,
that each has a right to say what will be made of his own life. The
analogy between the legislator and the craftsman on which Plato
insists, breaks down because the legislator is dealing with men like
himself, men who can to some extent conceive their own end in life and
cannot be treated merely as means to the end of the legislator. The
sense of the value of "ruling and being ruled in turn" is derived
from the experience that the ruler may use his power to subordinate
the lives of the citizens of the state not to the common good but to
his own private purposes. In modern terms, it is a simple,
rough-and-ready attempt to solve that constant problem of politics,
how efficient government is to be combined with popular control. This
problem arises from the imperfection of human nature, apparent in
rulers as well as in ruled, and if the principle which attempts to
solve it be admitted as a principle of importance in the formation of
the best constitution, then the starting-point of politics will be
man's actual imperfection, not his ideal nature. Instead, then, of