It were well that at the outset we should define the sense in which we understand the word Politics. No word has been more cruelly abused, with the result that its true sense has been disastrously obscured to the grave detriment of the people and of their rulers.

Perhaps our minds fly off at a tangent to the Tapers, Tadpoles, Rigbys and the like, so relentlessly and yet so faithfully portrayed in Coningsby by Disraeli; or to some Political Society the sole purpose of which appears to be to provide a licensed cockpit for the envenomed recrimination of rival partizans. We need to disillusion ourselves; this sort of thing is not true Politics; like all false notions it is more dangerous than ignorance.

In the days when Politics came into being the politike episteme was the Science of Citizenship and the politike techne was the Art of Citizenship, that is to say, the theory and the practice of a member of a polis, whether ruled or ruler (cf. Plato, Gorg. 521 D). The duty concerned was primarily social as distinct from individual; not that the individual was dispensed from all responsibility, but that his responsibility as a citizen was determined by his membership of the polls (cf. Plato, Gorg, loc. cit., Apol. 31 D; Arist. Eth. Nic. VI, viii. 2). All this worked, as it were, within a microcosm. Outside the Greek world there were no cities, only the barbaros ge, a variegated waste the contagion of which threatened— especially from the direction of Asia—the purity of Hellenic art and culture and the honest simplicity of Hellenic thought. Nor were the Greek cities, according perhaps to the highest political ideal, encouraged to mutual intercourse—on the contrary the aim of each city was to be aularkes, self-sufficient, to legislate for itself and to live to itself (cf. Arist. Eth. Nic. I, vii, 5).