Politics   

appears to depend on property, they are absorbed in getting wealth:
and so there arises the second species of wealth-getting. For, as
their enjoyment is in excess, they seek an art which produces the
excess of enjoyment; and, if they are not able to supply their
pleasures by the art of getting wealth, they try other arts, using in
turn every faculty in a manner contrary to nature. The quality of
courage, for example, is not intended to make wealth, but to inspire
confidence; neither is this the aim of the general's or of the
physician's art; but the one aims at victory and the other at health.
Nevertheless, some men turn every quality or art into a means of
getting wealth; this they conceive to be the end, and to the promotion
of the end they think all things must contribute.
Thus, then, we have considered the art of wealth-getting which is
unnecessary, and why men want it; and also the necessary art of
wealth-getting, which we have seen to be different from the other, and
to be a natural part of the art of managing a household, concerned
with the provision of food, not, however, like the former kind,
unlimited, but having a limit.
Part X
And we have found the answer to our original question, Whether the art
of getting wealth is the business of the manager of a household and of
the statesman or not their business? viz., that wealth is presupposed
by them. For as political science does not make men, but takes them
from nature and uses them, so too nature provides them with earth or
sea or the like as a source of food. At this stage begins the duty of
the manager of a household, who has to order the things which nature
supplies; he may be compared to the weaver who has not to make but to
use wool, and to know, too, what sort of wool is good and serviceable
or bad and unserviceable. Were this otherwise, it would be difficult
to see why the art of getting wealth is a part of the management of a
household and the art of medicine not; for surely the members of a
household must have health just as they must have life or any other
necessary. The answer is that as from one point of view the master of
the house and the ruler of the state have to consider about health,
from another point of view not they but the physician; so in one way
the art of household management, in another way the subordinate art,
has to consider about wealth. But, strictly speaking, as I have
already said, the means of life must be provided beforehand by nature;
for the business of nature is to furnish food to that which is born,
and the food of the offspring is always what remains over of that from
which it is produced. Wherefore the art of getting wealth out of
fruits and animals is always natural.
There are two sorts of wealth-getting, as I have said; one is a part
of household management, the other is retail trade: the former
necessary and honorable, while that which consists in exchange is
justly censured; for it is unnatural, and a mode by which men gain
from one another. The most hated sort, and with the greatest reason,
is usury, which makes a gain out of money itself, and not from the
natural object of it. For money was intended to be used in exchange,
but not to increase at interest. And this term interest, which means
the birth of money from money, is applied to the breeding of money
because the offspring resembles the parent. Wherefore of an modes of
getting wealth this is the most unnatural.
Part XI
Enough has been said about the theory of wealth-getting; we will now
proceed to the practical part. The discussion of such matters is not
unworthy of philosophy, but to be engaged in them practically is
illiberal and irksome. The useful parts of wealth-getting are, first,
the knowledge of livestock- which are most profitable, and where, and
how- as, for example, what sort of horses or sheep or oxen or any
other animals are most likely to give a return. A man ought to know
which of these pay better than others, and which pay best in
particular places, for some do better in one place and some in
another. Secondly, husbandry, which may be either tillage or planting,