To Know What Virtue Is Is Not

Democracy Is The Form Of Government In Which The Free Are Rulers, And Oligarchy In Which The Rich; It Is Only An Accident That The Free Are The Many And The Rich Are The Few.

But Since There Is But One Aim For The Entire State, It Follows That Education Must Be One And The Same For All, And That The Responsibility For It Must Be A Public One, Not The Private Affair Which It Now Is, Each Man Looking After His Own Children And Teaching Them Privately Whatever Private Curriculum He Thinks They Ought To Study.

Now It Is Evident That The Form Of Government Is Best In Which Every Man, Whoever He Is, Can Act Best And Live Happily.

So Virtue Is A Purposive Disposition, Lying In A Mean That Is Relative To Us And Determined By A Rational Principle, And By That Which A Prudent Man Would Use To Determine It. It Is A Mean Between Two Kinds Of Vice, One Of Excess And The Other Of Deficiency.

Of Old, The Demagogue Was Also A General, And Then Democracies Changed Into Tyrannies. Most Of The Ancient Tyrants Were Originally Demagogues. They Are Not So Now, But They Were Then; And The Reason Is That They Were Generals And Not Orators, For Oratory Had Not Yet Come Into Fashion.