• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

By Root 3062 0

human society, fully developed, is a State, and the whole is prior to the part. The conception involved here is that of organism: a hand, when the body is destroyed, is, we are told, no longer a hand. The implication is that a hand is to be defined by its purpose—that of grasping—which it can only perform when joined to a living body. In like manner an individual cannot fulfil his purpose unless he is part of a State. He who founded the State, Aristotle says, was the greatest of benefactors; for without law man is the worst of animals, and law depends for its existence on the State. The State is not a mere society for exchange and the prevention of crime: 'The end of the State is the good life…. And the State is the union of families and villages in a perfect and self-sufficing life, by which we mean a happy and honourable life' (1280b). 'A political society exists for the sake of noble actions, not of mere companionship' (1281a).

A State being composed of households, each of which consists of one family, the discussion of politics should begin with the family. The bulk of this discussion is concerned with slavery—for in antiquity the slaves were always reckoned as part of the family. Slavery is expedient and right, but the slave should be naturally inferior to the master. From birth, some are marked out for subjection, others for rule; the man who is by nature not his own but another man's is by nature a slave. Slaves should not be Greeks, but of an inferior race with less spirit (1255a and 1330a). Tame animals are better off when ruled by man, and so are those who are naturally inferior when ruled by their superiors. It may be questioned whether the practice of making slaves out of prisoners of war is justified; power, such as leads to victory in war, seems to imply superior virtue, but this is not always the case. War, however, is just when waged against men who, though intended by nature to be governed, will not submit (1256b); and in this case, it is implied, it would be right to make slaves of the conquered. This would seem enough to justify any conqueror who ever lived; for no nation will admit that it is intended by nature to be governed, and the only evidence as to nature's intentions must be derived from the outcome of war. In every war, therefore, the victors are in the right and the vanquished in the wrong. Very satisfactory!

Next comes a discussion of trade, which profoundly influenced scholastic casuistry. There are two uses of a thing, one proper, the other improper; a shoe, for instance, may be worn, which is its proper use, or exchanged, which is its improper use. It follows that there is something degraded about a shoemaker, who must exchange his shoes in order to live. Retail trade, we are told, is not a natural part of the art of getting wealth (1257a). The natural way to get wealth is by skilful management of house and land. To the wealth that can be made in this way there is a limit, but to what can be made by trade there is none. Trade has to do with money, but wealth is not the acquisition of coin. Wealth derived from trade is justly hated, because it is unnatural. '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…. Of all modes of getting wealth this is the most unnatural' (1258).

What came of this dictum you may read in Tawney's Religion and the Rise of Capitalism. But while his history is reliable, his comment has a bias in favour of what is pre-capitalistic.

'Usury' means all lending money at interest, not only, as now, lending at an exorbitant rate. From Greek times to the present day, mankind, or at least the economically more developed portion of them, have been divided into debtors and creditors; debtors have disapproved of interest, and creditors have approved of it. At most times, landowners have been debtors, while men engaged in commerce have been creditors. The views of philosophers, with few exceptions, have coincided