Everywhere inequality is a cause of revolution, but an
inequality in which there is no proportion- for instance, a
perpetual monarchy among equals; and always it is the desire of
equality which rises in rebellion.
Now equality is of two kinds, numerical and proportional; by the
first I mean sameness or equality in number or size; by the second,
equality of ratios. For example, the excess of three over two is
numerically equal to the excess of two over one; whereas four
exceeds two in the same ratio in which two exceeds one, for two is the
same part of four that one is of two, namely, the half. As I was
saying before, men agree that justice in the abstract is proportion,
but they differ in that some think that if they are equal in any
respect they are equal absolutely, others that if they are unequal
in any respect they should be unequal in all. Hence there are two
principal forms of government, democracy and oligarchy; for good birth
and virtue are rare, but wealth and numbers are more common. In what
city shall we find a hundred persons of good birth and of virtue?
whereas the rich everywhere abound. That a state should be ordered,
simply and wholly, according to either kind of equality, is not a good
thing; the proof is the fact that such forms of government never last.
They are originally based on a mistake, and, as they begin badly,
cannot fall to end badly.
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