a social animal could a man profitably live the good life. He
showed a typical Greek reverence for custom and tradition,
while at the same time he insisted oil the need for clear thinking
and the use of reason. He insisted, too, that theory and prac-
tice were not two, but one, and he stressed the need for wisdom
in politics. He reverenced law, but his essential concern was
with the very ideal of justice, which involved knowledge and
led to action. These ideas, implicit in Socrates, were developed
in various ways by Plato and Aristotle, who judged things in
terms of the concepts of proportion and harmony, and endeav-
ored to create it bridge between the practice of politics, in which
equality and liberty are pursued, and the idea of the state, which
is the attainment of justice.

By way of conclusion, we may insist that the great Greek con-
tibution to political thought was this very insistence that po-
litical science is ethical, and that this ethical content arises from
the nature of society itself. While the Greeks reverenced law,
the state was not for them simply the legal institutions existing
at any one time and place. The state was what the state ought
to do, not what any particular and actual state does. But, above
all, the state was for them an educational institution: knowl-
edge, necessary if one is to do what one ought to do, and, when
possessed, even compelling one to do it, is teachable, since it is
founded in rational principle, and reason is the distinguishing
mark of man.

For the beginner, G. Lowes Dickinson The Greek View of Life
provides an admirable background to the study of Greek political
thought. It is concerned mainly with the Greek attitude towards
religion, the individual, and the state. It is, however, rhapsodic
and uncritical. It may be supplemented by A. E. Zimmern The
Greek Commonwealth, which gives a fairly detailed picture of
Greek civilization. The Legacy of Greece (ed. R. W. Livingstone)
contains articles on various aspects of Greek life. Among them
Professor Zimmern article on "Political Thought" is directly ger-
mane, while all essay by professor Gilbert Murray, concerned with
the lasting significance of Greece's contribution to the world, is sug-
gestive, stimulating, and finely written.

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