Aristotle on the Excellence of the Polis

§8. When we come to the final and perfect association, formed from a number of villages, we have already reached the polis -- an association which may be said to have reached the height of full self-sufficiency; or rather [to speak more exactly] we may say that while it grows for the sake of mere life [and is so far, and at that stage, still short of full self-sufficiency], it exists [when once it is fully grown] for the sake of a good life [and is therefore fully self-sufficient].

Because it is the completion of associations existing by nature, every polis exists by nature, having itself the same quality as the earlier association from which it grew. It is the end or consummation to which those associations move, and the "nature" of things consists in their end or consummation; for what each thing is when its growth is completed we call the nature of that thing, whether it be a man or a horse or a family. §9. Again [and this is a second reason for regarding the state as natural] the end, or final cause, is the best. Now self-sufficiency [which it is the object of the state to bring about] is the end, and so the best; [and on this it follows that the state brings about the best, and is therefore natural, since nature always aims at bringing about the best].

From these considerations it is evident that the polis belongs to the class of things that exist by nature, and that man is by nature an animal intended to live in a polis. He who is without a polis, by reason of his own nature and not of some accident, is either a poor sort of being, or a being higher than man: he is like the man of whom Homer wrote in denunciation:

"Clanless and lawless and heartless is he."

[From Aristotle's Politics, edited and translated by Ernest Barker (Book I, Chapter 2, §8-9).]