tainly is the nature of that being, whether it be a man, a horse, or
a house: besides, whatsoever produces the final cause and the end which
we [1253a] desire, must be best; but a government complete in itself is
that final cause and what is best. Hence it is evident that a city is
a natural production, and that man is naturally a political animal, and
that whosoever is naturally and not accidentally unfit for society, must
be either inferior or superior to man: thus the man in Homer, who is
reviled for being "without society, without law, without family." Such
a one must naturally be of a quarrelsome disposition, and as solitary as
the birds. The gift of speech also evidently proves that man is a more
social animal than the bees, or any of the herding cattle: for nature,
as we say, does nothing in vain, and man is the only animal who enjoys
it. Voice indeed, as being the token of pleasure and pain, is imparted
to others also, and thus much their nature is capable of, to perceive
pleasure and pain, and to impart these sensations to others; but it is
by speech that we are enabled to express what is useful for us, and what
is hurtful, and of course what is just and what is unjust: for in
this particular man differs from other animals, that he alone has
a perception of good and evil, of just and unjust, and it is a
participation of these common sentiments which forms a family and a
city. 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 b