To: Lane3 who wrote (92598 ) 10/30/2008 10:46:54 PM From: wonk Read Replies (1) | Respond to ...Good for the country as an entity (which is my take on the term, "greater good") as opposed to the sum of the individual good? Politics - 350 BCE.... Those who have too much of the goods of fortune, strength, wealth, friends, and the like, are neither willing nor able to submit to authority....On the other hand, the very poor, who are in the opposite extreme, are too degraded....Thus arises a city, not of freemen, but of masters and slaves, the one despising, the other envying; and nothing can be more fatal to friendship and good fellowship in states than this: for good fellowship springs from friendship; when men are at enmity with one another, they would rather not even share the same path. But a city ought to be composed, as far as possible, of equals and similars; and these are generally the middle classes.Great then is the good fortune of a state in which the citizens have a moderate and sufficient property; for where some possess much, and the others nothing, there may arise an extreme democracy, or a pure oligarchy; or a tyranny may grow out of either extreme — either out of the most rampant democracy, or out of an oligarchy; but it is not so likely to arise out of the middle constitutions and those akin to them.... classics.mit.edu
