But there is a difficulty attending this form of government, for it
seems, that the person who himself was capable of curing any one who
was then sick, must be the best judge whom to employ as a physician;
but such a one must be himself a physician; and the same holds true in
every other practice and art: and as a physician ought [1282a] to give
an account of his practice to a physician, so ought it to be in other
arts: those whose business is physic may be divided into three sorts,
the first of these is he who makes up the medicines; the second
prescribes, and is to the other as the architect is to the mason; the
third is he who understands the science, but never practises it: now
these three distinctions may be found in those who understand all
other arts; nor have we less opinion of their judgment who are only
instructed in the principles of the art than of those who practise it:
and with respect to elections the same method of proceeding seems
right; for to elect a proper person in any science is the business of
those who are skilful therein; as in geometry, of geometricians; in
steering, of steersmen: but if some individuals should know something
of particular arts and works, they do not know more than the
professors of them: so that even upon this principle neither the
election of magistrates, nor the censure of their conduct, should be
entrusted to the many.
But probably all that has been here said may not be right; for, to
resume the argument I lately used, if the people are not very brutal
indeed, although we allow that each individual knows less of these
affairs than those who have given particular attention to them, yet
when they come together they will know them better, or at least not
worse; besides, in some particular arts it is not the workman only who
is the best judge; namely, in those the works of which are understood
by those who do not profess them: thus he who builds a house is not
the only judge of it, for the master of the family who inhabits it is
a better; thus also a steersman is a better judge of a tiller than he
who made it; and he who gives an entertainment than the cook.
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