They are also less liable to corruption from their
numbers, as water is from its quantity: besides, the judgment of an
individual must necessarily be perverted if he is overcome by anger or
any other passion; but it would be hard indeed if the whole community
should be misled by anger. Moreover, let the people be free, and they
will do nothing but in conformity to the law, except only in those
cases which the law cannot speak to. But though what I am going to
propose may not easily be met with, yet if the majority of the state
should happen to be good men, should they prefer one uncorrupt
governor or many equally good, is it not evident that they should
choose the many? But there may be divisions among [1286b] these which
cannot happen when there is but one. In answer to this it may be
replied that all their souls will be as much animated with virtue as
this one man's.
If then a government of many, and all of them good men, compose an
aristocracy, and the government of one a kingly power, it is evident
that the people should rather choose the first than the last; and this
whether the state is powerful or not, if many such persons so alike
can be met with: and for this reason probable it was, that the first
governments were generally monarchies; because it was difficult to
find a number of persons eminently virtuous, more particularly as the
world was then divided into small communities; besides, kings were
appointed in return for the benefits they had conferred on mankind;
but such actions are peculiar to good men: but when many persons equal
in virtue appeared at the time, they brooked not a superiority, but
sought after an equality and established a free state; but after this,
when they degenerated, they made a property of the public; which
probably gave rise to oligarchies; for they made wealth meritorious,
and the honours of government were reserved for the rich: and these
afterwards turned to tyrannies and these in their turn gave rise to
democracies; for the power of the tyrants continually decreasing, on
account of their rapacious avarice, the people grew powerful enough to
frame and establish democracies: and as cities after that happened to
increase, probably it was not easy for them to be under any other
government than a democracy.
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