, coming together, they are
like one man made up of a multitude, with many feet, many hands,
and many intelligences: thus is it with respect to the manners and
understandings of the multitude taken together; for which reason the
public are the best judges of music and poetry; for some understand
one part, some another, and all collectively the whole; and in this
particular men of consequence differ from each of the many; as they
say those who are beautiful do from those who are not so, and as fine
pictures excel any natural objects, by collecting the several beautiful
parts which were dispersed among different originals into one, although
the separate parts, as the eye or any other, might be handsomer than in
the picture.

But if this distinction is to be made between every people and every
general assembly, and some few men of consequence, it may be doubtful
whether it is true; nay, it is clear enough that, with respect to a few,
it is not; since the same conclusion might be applied even to brutes:
and indeed wherein do some men differ from brutes? Not but that nothing
prevents what I have said being true of the people in some states. The
doubt then which we have lately proposed, with all its consequences, may
be settled in this manner; it is necessary that the freemen who compose
the bulk of the people should have absolute power in some things; but as
they are neither men of property, nor act uniformly upon principles
of virtue, it is not safe to trust them with the first offices in the
state, both on account of their iniquity and their ignorance; from
the one of which they will do what is wrong, from the other they will
mistake: and yet it is dangerous to allow them no power or share in the
government; for when there are many poor people who are incapable of
acquiring the honours of their country, the state must necessarily have
many enemies in it; let them then be permitted to vote in the public
assemblies and to determine causes; for which reason Socrates, and some
other legislators, gave them the power of electing the officers of the
state, and also of inquiring into their conduct when they came out of
office, and only prevented their being magistrates by themselves;
for the multitude when they are collected together have all of them
sufficient understanding for these purposes, and, mixing among those of
higher rank, are serviceable to the city, as some things, which alone
are improper for food, when mixed with ot