most worthy
city the happiest: but here there are two particulars which require
consideration, one of which is, whether it is the most eligible life
to be a member of the community and enjoy the rights of a citizen, or
whether to live as a stranger, without interfering in public affairs;
and also what form of government is to be preferred, and what
disposition of the state is best; whether the whole community should be
eligible to a share in the administration, or only the greater part, and
some only: as this, therefore, is a subject of political examination
and speculation, and not what concerns the individual, and the first of
these is what we are at present engaged in, the one of these I am not
obliged to speak to, the other is the proper business of my present
design. It is evident that government must be the best which is so
established, that every one therein may have it in his power to act
virtuously and live happily: but some, who admit that a life o! virtue
is most eligible, still doubt which is preferable a public life of
active virtue, or one entirely disengaged from what is without and
spent in contemplation; which some say is the only one worthy of a
philosopher; and one of these two different modes of life both now
and formerly seem to have been chosen by all those who were the most
virtuous men; I mean the public or philosophic. And yet it is of no
little consequence on which side the truth lies; for a man of sense
must naturally incline to the better choice; both as an individual and a
citizen. Some think that a tyrannic government over those near us is
the greatest injustice; but that a political one is not unjust: but that
still is a restraint on the pleasures and tranquillity of life. Others
hold the quite contrary opinion, and think that a public and active life
is the only life for man: for that private persons have no opportunity
of practising any one virtue, more than they have who are engaged
in public life the management of the [1324b] state. These are their
sentiments; others say, that a tyrannical and despotical mode of
government is the only happy one; for even amongst some free states the
object of their laws seems to be to tyrannise over their neighbours: so
that the generality of political institutions, wheresoever dispersed,
if they have any one common object in view, have all of them this,
to conquer and govern. It is evident, both from the laws of the
Lacedaemonians and Cretans, as well