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Of all the works I wrote, the Politics is the one I would most want students to read first — before the Metaphysics, before the Nicomachean Ethics, before the biological treatises. Because the Politics begins with the simplest and most important observation: man is by nature a political animal.

This is not a statement about Greek city-states. It is a statement about what human beings are. We cannot live well in isolation. The household requires the village. The village requires the city. The city is the natural environment in which human excellence can be fully realised. A person who has no need of society is either a beast or a god. Most of us are neither.

I examined one hundred fifty-eight constitutions, compared their histories, classified their failures and successes. The conclusion was neither democracy nor oligarchy but a polity — a constitution that mixes elements of both, prevents extreme wealth or poverty from dominating, and governs in the common interest. Aristotle the theorist. Aristotle the empiricist. I refused to separate them.