Politics   

we saw, rules over wife and children, both free, but the rule differs,
the rule over his children being a royal, over his wife a
constitutional rule. For although there may be exceptions to the order
of nature, the male is by nature fitter for command than the female,
just as the elder and full-grown is superior to the younger and more
immature. But in most constitutional states the citizens rule and are
ruled by turns, for the idea of a constitutional state implies that
the natures of the citizens are equal, and do not differ at all.
Nevertheless, when one rules and the other is ruled we endeavor to
create a difference of outward forms and names and titles of respect,
which may be illustrated by the saying of Amasis about his foot-pan.
The relation of the male to the female is of this kind, but there the
inequality is permanent. The rule of a father over his children is
royal, for he rules by virtue both of love and of the respect due to
age, exercising a kind of royal power. And therefore Homer has
appropriately called Zeus 'father of Gods and men,' because he is the
king of them all. For a king is the natural superior of his subjects,
but he should be of the same kin or kind with them, and such is the
relation of elder and younger, of father and son.
Part XIII
Thus it is clear that household management attends more to men than to
the acquisition of inanimate things, and to human excellence more than
to the excellence of property which we call wealth, and to the virtue
of freemen more than to the virtue of slaves. A question may indeed be
raised, whether there is any excellence at all in a slave beyond and
higher than merely instrumental and ministerial qualities- whether he
can have the virtues of temperance, courage, justice, and the like; or
whether slaves possess only bodily and ministerial qualities. And,
whichever way we answer the question, a difficulty arises; for, if
they have virtue, in what will they differ from freemen? On the other
hand, since they are men and share in rational principle, it seems
absurd to say that they have no virtue. A similar question may be
raised about women and children, whether they too have virtues: ought
a woman to be temperate and brave and just, and is a child to be
called temperate, and intemperate, or note So in general we may ask
about the natural ruler, and the natural subject, whether they have
the same or different virtues. For if a noble nature is equally
required in both, why should one of them always rule, and the other
always be ruled? Nor can we say that this is a question of degree, for
the difference between ruler and subject is a difference of kind,
which the difference of more and less never is. Yet how strange is the
supposition that the one ought, and that the other ought not, to have
virtue! For if the ruler is intemperate and unjust, how can he rule
well? If the subject, how can he obey well? If he be licentious and
cowardly, he will certainly not do his duty. It is evident, therefore,
that both of them must have a share of virtue, but varying as natural
subjects also vary among themselves. Here the very constitution of the
soul has shown us the way; in it one part naturally rules, and the
other is subject, and the virtue of the ruler we in maintain to be
different from that of the subject; the one being the virtue of the
rational, and the other of the irrational part. Now, it is obvious
that the same principle applies generally, and therefore almost all
things rule and are ruled according to nature. But the kind of rule
differs; the freeman rules over the slave after another manner from
that in which the male rules over the female, or the man over the
child; although the parts of the soul are present in an of them, they
are present in different degrees. For the slave has no deliberative
faculty at all; the woman has, but it is without authority, and the
child has, but it is immature. So it must necessarily be supposed to
be with the moral virtues also; all should partake of them, but only
in such manner and degree as is required by each for the fulfillment
of his duty. Hence the ruler ought to have moral virtue in perfection,
for his function, taken absolutely, demands a master artificer, and
rational principle is such an artificer; the subjects, oil the other