8 DISCOURSE ONE
we shall send the reader back to the discourse, chapter, and paragraph in which the proof was originally given, so that thus he may easily be able to find the certainty of the proposition in question.
CHAPTER II: on the first questions in this book,
and the distinction of the various meanings of the term "state"
ENTERING upon our proposed task, we wish first to show what are the tranquillity and intranquillity of the state or city; and first the tranquillity, for if this be not clear, one is necessarily ignorant also of what is intranquillity. Since, however, both of these seem to be dispositions of the city or state (let this be assumed from Cassiodorus), we shall consequently make clear what must be revealed at the very outset; namely, what is the state or city, and why. Through this, the definitions of tranquillity and of its opposite will be more readily apparent.
2. Following the aforesaid order for the definition of the tranquillity of the city or state, we must notice, in order to prevent ambiguity from entering our project, that the term "state" (regnwn) has many meanings. In one sense it means a number of cities (civitatum) or provinces contained under one regime; in which sense a state does not differ from a city with respect to species of polity but rather with respect to quantity. In another sense the term "state" signifies a certain species of temperate polity or regime, which Aristotle calls "temperate monarchy";1 in this sense a state may consist in a single city as well as in many cities, as was the case around the time of the rise of civil communities, for then there was usually one king in a single city. The third and most familiar sense of this term is a combination of the first and the second. In its fourth sense it means something common to every species of temperate regime, whether in a single city or in many; it was in this sense that Cassiodorus used it in the passage we quoted at the beginning of this book, and this, too, is the sense in which we shall use the term in our discussions of the matters under inquiry.2
3. Now we must define tranquillity and its opposite. Let us assume with
1 Sec Aristotle Politics in. 7. 1279a 34; cf. ibid. v. 8. 1307b 30.
: This decision to use the term rcgnttm to mean "something common to every species of temperate regime" is unique among the medieval Aristotelians in two respects, for the others use the term in MarsiUus' third sense alone, i. e., as signifying a royal monarchy composed of a number of cities. See Vol. I, pp. 117, 136-27.
m: ORIGIN OF THE CIVIL COMMUNITY g
Aristotle in his Politics, Book I, Chapter 2, and Book V, Chapter 3, that the state is like an animate nature or animal.3 For just as an animal well disposed in accordance with nature is composed of certain proportioned parts ordered to one another and communicating their functions mutually and for the whole, so too the state is constituted of certain such parts when it is well disposed and established in accordance with reason. The relation, therefore, of the state and its parts to tranquillity will be seen to be similar to the relation of the animal and its parts to health. The trustworthiness of this inference we can accept from what all men comprehend about each of these relations. For they think that health is the best disposition of an animal in accordance with nature, and likewise that tranquillity is the best disposition of a state established in accordance with reason. Health, moreover, as the more experienced physicists describe it, is the good disposition of the animal whereby each of its parts can perfectly perform the operations belonging to its nature; according to which analogy tranquillity will be the good disposition of the city or state whereby each of its parts will be able perfectly to perform the operadons belonging to it in accordance with reason and its establishment. And since a good definition consignifies contraries, intranquillity will be the diseased disposition of the city or state, like the illness of an animal, whereby all or some of its parts are impeded from performing the operations belonging to them, either entirely or to the extent required for complete functioning.4
In this analogical way, then, we have defined tranquillity and its opposite, intranquillity.
CHAPTER III: on the origin of the civil community
HAVING defined tranquillity as the good disposition of the state for the functioning of its parts, wc must now examine what the state is in itself, an'd why;1 what and how many are its primary parts; 2 what is the function appropriate to each part,3 their causes,4 and their order in relation to one another.5 For these are the main points required for the perfect determination of tranquillity and its opposite.
3 See Politics 1. 5. 1254a 31 ff.; v. 3. 1302b 34 fi. C£. ibid. vt. 4. 1290a 24 ff.
4 For the background of these definitions of tranquillity and intranquillity, and the uniqueness of Marsilius' interpretations of them, see Vol. I, pp. 95 ff.
1 See below, 1. iv. 1, 2. 21. iv. 3-4; 1. v. 1, s 1. v. 5-13; 1. vi.
* I- vii. 5 1. viii. 1; 1. xv. 14.