We can appreciate Aristotle's critical analysis of constitutions, but find it hard to take seriously his advice to the legislator.

Moreover, the idealism and the empiricism of the Politics are never really reconciled by Aristotle himself.
It may help to an understanding of the Politics if something is said on those two points.
We are accustomed since the growth of the historical method to the belief that states are "not made but grow," and are apt to be impatient with the belief which Aristotle and Plato show in the powers of the lawgiver.

But however true the maxim may be of the modern nation state, it was not true of the much smaller and more self-conscious Greek city.
When Aristotle talks of the legislator, he is not talking in the air.

Students of the Academy had been actually called on to give new constitutions to Greek states.

For the Greeks the constitution was not merely as it is so often with us, a matter of political machinery.