Politics   

nature. The law of which I speak is a sort of convention- the law by
which whatever is taken in war is supposed to belong to the victors.
But this right many jurists impeach, as they would an orator who
brought forward an unconstitutional measure: they detest the notion
that, because one man has the power of doing violence and is superior
in brute strength, another shall be his slave and subject. Even among
philosophers there is a difference of opinion. The origin of the
dispute, and what makes the views invade each other's territory, is as
follows: in some sense virtue, when furnished with means, has actually
the greatest power of exercising force; and as superior power is only
found where there is superior excellence of some kind, power seems to
imply virtue, and the dispute to be simply one about justice (for it
is due to one party identifying justice with goodwill while the other
identifies it with the mere rule of the stronger). If these views are
thus set out separately, the other views have no force or plausibility
against the view that the superior in virtue ought to rule, or be
master. Others, clinging, as they think, simply to a principle of
justice (for law and custom are a sort of justice), assume that
slavery in accordance with the custom of war is justified by law, but
at the same moment they deny this. For what if the cause of the war be
unjust? And again, no one would ever say he is a slave who is unworthy
to be a slave. Were this the case, men of the highest rank would be
slaves and the children of slaves if they or their parents chance to
have been taken captive and sold. Wherefore Hellenes do not like to
call Hellenes slaves, but confine the term to barbarians. Yet, in
using this language, they really mean the natural slave of whom we
spoke at first; for it must be admitted that some are slaves
everywhere, others nowhere. The same principle applies to nobility.
Hellenes regard themselves as noble everywhere, and not only in their
own country, but they deem the barbarians noble only when at home,
thereby implying that there are two sorts of nobility and freedom, the
one absolute, the other relative. The Helen of Theodectes says:
"Who would presume to call me servant who am on both sides sprung from
the stem of the Gods? "
What does this mean but that they distinguish freedom and slavery,
noble and humble birth, by the two principles of good and evil? They
think that as men and animals beget men and animals, so from good men
a good man springs. But this is what nature, though she may intend it,
cannot always accomplish.
We see then that there is some foundation for this difference of
opinion, and that all are not either slaves by nature or freemen by
nature, and also that there is in some cases a marked distinction
between the two classes, rendering it expedient and right for the one
to be slaves and the others to be masters: the one practicing
obedience, the others exercising the authority and lordship which
nature intended them to have. The abuse of this authority is injurious
to both; for the interests of part and whole, of body and soul, are
the same, and the slave is a part of the master, a living but
separated part of his bodily frame. Hence, where the relation of
master and slave between them is natural they are friends and have a
common interest, but where it rests merely on law and force the
reverse is true.
Part VII
The previous remarks are quite enough to show that the rule of a
master is not a constitutional rule, and that all the different kinds
of rule are not, as some affirm, the same with each other. For there
is one rule exercised over subjects who are by nature free, another
over subjects who are by nature slaves. The rule of a household is a
monarchy, for every house is under one head: whereas constitutional
rule is a government of freemen and equals. The master is not called a
master because he has science, but because he is of a certain
character, and the same remark applies to the slave and the freeman.
Still there may be a science for the master and science for the slave.
The science of the slave would be such as the man of Syracuse taught,