Hence this obvious conclusion, that the State is a fact of nature, that man is naturally a sociable being, and that he who remains savage by organization, and not by the effect of chance, is certainly, or a being degraded, or a being superior to the human species. It is indeed to him that one could address this reproach of Homer: “Without family, without laws, without hearth…” The man who would be by nature such as that of the poet would breathe only war; for he would then be incapable of any union, like the birds of prey.

If man is infinitely more sociable than bees and all the other animals that live in herds, it is obviously, as I have often said, that nature does nothing in vain. However, it grants the floor to the man exclusively. The voice can well express joy and pain; also it is not lacking in other animals, because their organization goes so far as to feel these two affections and to communicate them to each other. But speech is made to express the good and the bad, and consequently also the just and the unjust; and man has this special thing, among all the animals, that he alone conceives good and evil, right and wrong, and all feelings of the same order, which in association constitute precisely the family and the family. 'State.

It cannot be doubted that the State is naturally above the family and each individual; for the whole necessarily outweighs the part, since, the whole once destroyed, there are no more parts, no more feet, no more hands, except by a pure analogy of words, as we said a hand of stone; for the hand, separated from the body, is just as little a real hand. Things are generally defined by the acts they perform and those they can perform; as soon as their previous aptitude comes to an end, they can no longer be said to be the same; they are only included under the same name.

What clearly proves the natural necessity of the State and its superiority over the individual is that, if it is not admitted, the individual can then be self-sufficient in isolation from the whole. as well as the rest of the parties; now, he who cannot live in society, and whose independence has no needs, he can never be a member of the State. He's a brute or a god.

Nature therefore instinctively drives all men to political association. The first who rendered the institute an immense service; for if man, having reached all his perfection, is the first of the animals, he is also the last when he lives without laws and without justice. There is nothing more monstrous, indeed, than armed injustice. But man has received from nature the weapons of wisdom and virtue, which he must above all employ against his evil passions. Without virtue, it is the most perverse and ferocious being; he has only the brutal outbursts of love and hunger. Justice is a social necessity; for right is the rule of political association, and the decision of the just is what constitutes right.

Aristotle, Politics . I.9-13