Politics   

who made money by instructing slaves in their ordinary duties. And
such a knowledge may be carried further, so as to include cookery and
similar menial arts. For some duties are of the more necessary, others
of the more honorable sort; as the proverb says, 'slave before slave,
master before master.' But all such branches of knowledge are servile.
There is likewise a science of the master, which teaches the use of
slaves; for the master as such is concerned, not with the acquisition,
but with the use of them. Yet this so-called science is not anything
great or wonderful; for the master need only know how to order that
which the slave must know how to execute. Hence those who are in a
position which places them above toil have stewards who attend to
their households while they occupy themselves with philosophy or with
politics. But the art of acquiring slaves, I mean of justly acquiring
them, differs both from the art of the master and the art of the
slave, being a species of hunting or war. Enough of the distinction
between master and slave.
Part VIII
Let us now inquire into property generally, and into the art of
getting wealth, in accordance with our usual method, for a slave has
been shown to be a part of property. The first question is whether the
art of getting wealth is the same with the art of managing a household
or a part of it, or instrumental to it; and if the last, whether in
the way that the art of making shuttles is instrumental to the art of
weaving, or in the way that the casting of bronze is instrumental to
the art of the statuary, for they are not instrumental in the same
way, but the one provides tools and the other material; and by
material I mean the substratum out of which any work is made; thus
wool is the material of the weaver, bronze of the statuary. Now it is
easy to see that the art of household management is not identical with
the art of getting wealth, for the one uses the material which the
other provides. For the art which uses household stores can be no
other than the art of household management. There is, however, a doubt
whether the art of getting wealth is a part of household management or
a distinct art. If the getter of wealth has to consider whence wealth
and property can be procured, but there are many sorts of property and
riches, then are husbandry, and the care and provision of food in
general, parts of the wealth-getting art or distinct arts? Again,
there are many sorts of food, and therefore there are many kinds of
lives both of animals and men; they must all have food, and the
differences in their food have made differences in their ways of life.
For of beasts, some are gregarious, others are solitary; they live in
the way which is best adapted to sustain them, accordingly as they are
carnivorous or herbivorous or omnivorous: and their habits are
determined for them by nature in such a manner that they may obtain
with greater facility the food of their choice. But, as different
species have different tastes, the same things are not naturally
pleasant to all of them; and therefore the lives of carnivorous or
herbivorous animals further differ among themselves. In the lives of
men too there is a great difference. The laziest are shepherds, who
lead an idle life, and get their subsistence without trouble from tame
animals; their flocks having to wander from place to place in search
of pasture, they are compelled to follow them, cultivating a sort of
living farm. Others support themselves by hunting, which is of
different kinds. Some, for example, are brigands, others, who dwell
near lakes or marshes or rivers or a sea in which there are fish, are
fishermen, and others live by the pursuit of birds or wild beasts. The
greater number obtain a living from the cultivated fruits of the soil.
Such are the modes of subsistence which prevail among those whose
industry springs up of itself, and whose food is not acquired by
exchange and retail trade- there is the shepherd, the husbandman, the
brigand, the fisherman, the hunter. Some gain a comfortable
maintenance out of two employments, eking out the deficiencies of one
of them by another: thus the life of a shepherd may be combined with
that of a brigand, the life of a farmer with that of a hunter. Other