r, saith the Lord, and I will heal him: but
the wicked are like the troubled sea when it cannot rest, whose waters
cast up mire and dirt. There is no peace, saith my God, for the wicked.'
'Out of Zion shall go forth the Law and the word of the Lord from
Jerusalem. And he shall judge between the nations and shall reprove many
peoples; and they shall beat their swords into plowshares and their
spears into pruning hooks: nation shall not lift up sword against
nation, neither shall they learn war any more.'[61]

It was, however, Plato and Aristotle who first made politics a branch of
separate study: and, unlike many of their modern successors, they
pursued it throughout in close connexion with the kindred studies of
ethics and psychology. Their scope was, of course, confined to the field
of their own experience, the small self-contained City-States of Greece,
and it did not fall within their province to foreshadow, like the Jewish
Prophets, the end of warfare, or to speculate on the ultimate unity of
mankind. Their task was to interpret the work of their own
fellow-countrymen on the narrow stage of Greek life. Their lasting
achievement is to have laid down for mankind what a State is, as
compared with other forms of human association, and to have proclaimed,
once and for all, in set terms, that its object is to promote the 'good
life' of its members. 'Every State', says Aristotle in the opening
words of his _Politics_, 'is a community of some kind.' That is to say,
States belong to the same _genus_, as it were, as political parties,
trade unions, cricket clubs, business houses, or such gatherings as
ours. What, then, is the difference between a State and a political
party? 'If all communities', he goes on, 'aim at some good, the State or
political community, which is the highest of all and which embraces all
the rest, aims, and in a greater degree than any other, at the highest
good.'

Why is the State the highest of all forms of association? Why should our
citizenship, for instance, take precedence of our trade unionism or our
business obligations? Aristotle replies, and in spite of recent critics
I think the reply still holds good: because, but for the existence of
the State and the reign of law maintained by it, none of these
associations could have been formed or be maintained. 'He who first
founded the State was the greatest of benefactors. For man, when
protected, is the best of animals, but when separated from law a