Besides, the notion of a city
naturally precedes that of a family or an individual, for the whole
must necessarily be prior to the parts, for if you take away the whole
man, you cannot say a foot or a hand remains, unless by equivocation,
as supposing a hand of stone to be made, but that would only be a dead
one; but everything is understood to be this or that by its energic
qualities and powers, so that when these no longer remain, neither can
that be said to be the same, but something of the same name. That a
city then precedes an individual is plain, for if an individual is not
in himself sufficient to compose a perfect government, he is to a city
as other parts are to a whole; but he that is incapable of society, or
so complete in himself as not to want it, makes no part of a city, as
a beast or a god. There is then in all persons a natural impetus to
associate with each other in this manner, and he who first founded
civil society was the cause of the greatest good; for as by the
completion of it man is the most excellent of all living beings, so
without law and justice he would be the worst of all, for nothing is
so difficult to subdue as injustice in arms: but these arms man is
born with, namely, prudence and valour, which he may apply to the most
opposite purposes, for he who abuses them will be the most wicked, the
most cruel, the most lustful, and most gluttonous being imaginable;
for justice is a political virtue, by the rules of it the state is
regulated, and these rules are the criterion of what is right.
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