Yet his practical sense leads him to attribute greater importance than most other Greek writers to manufactures,and stillmore to trade,to enter more largely on questions relating to their conditions and development,and to bespeak for them thecountenance and protection of the state.Though his views on the nature of money are vague,and in some respectserroneous,he sees that its export in exchange for commodities will not impoverish the community.He also insists on thenecessity,with a view to a flourishing commerce with other countries,of peace,of a courteous and respectful treatment offoreign traders,and of a prompt and equitable decision of their legal suits.The institution of slavery he of course recognisesand does not disapprove;he even recommends,for the increase of the Attic revenues,the hiring out of slaves by the state forlabour in the mines,after branding them to prevent their escape,the number of slaves being constantly increased by freshpurchases out of the gains of the enterprise.(De Vect .,3,4.)Almost the whole system of Greek ideas up to the time of Aristotle is represented in his encyclopaedic construction.
Mathematical and astronomical science was largely developed at a later stage,but in the field of social studies no higherpoint was ever attained by the Greeks than is reached in the writings of this great thinker Both his gifts and his situationeminently favoured him in the treatment of these subjects.He combined in rare measure a capacity for keen observation withgeneralising power,and sobriety of judgment with ardour for the public good.All that was original or significant in thepolitical life of Hellas had run its course before his time or under his own eyes,and he had thus a large basis of variedexperience on which to ground his conclusions.Standing outside the actual movement of contemporary public life,heoccupied the position of thoughtful spectator and impartial judge.He could not,indeed,for reasons already stated,any morethan other Greek speculators,attain a fully normal attitude in these researches.Nor could he pass beyond the sphere of whatis now called statical sociology;the idea of laws of the historical development of social phenomena he scarcely apprehended,except in some small degree in relation to the succession of political forms.But there is to be found in his writings aremarkable body of sound and valuable thoughts on the constitution and working of the social organism The special noticesof economic subjects are neither so numerous nor so detailed as we should desire.Like all the Greek thinkers,he recognisesbut one doctrine of the state,under which ethics,politics proper,and economics take their place as departments,bearing toeach other a very close relation,and having indeed their lines of demarcation from each other not very distinctly marked.
When wealth comes under consideration,it is studied not as an end in itself,but with a view to the higher elements andultimate aims of the collective life.
The origin of society he traces,not to economic necessities,but to natural social impulses in the human constitution.Thenature of the social union,when thus established,being determined by the partly spontaneous partly systematic combinationof diverse activities,he respects the independence of the latter whilst seeking to effect their convergence.He thereforeopposes himself to the suppression of personal freedom and initiative,and the excessive subordination of the individual tothe state,and rejects the community of property and wives proposed by Plato for his governing class.The principle ofprivate property he regards as deeply rooted in man,and the evils which are alleged to result from the corresponding socialordinance he thinks ought really to be attributed either to the imperfections of our nature or to the vices of other publicinstitutions.Community of goods must,in his view,tend to neglect of the common interest and to the disturbance of socialharmony.
Of the several classes which provide for the different wants of the society,those who are occupied directly with its materialneeds --the immediate cultivators of the soil,the mechanics and artificers --are excluded from any share in the governmentof the state,as being without the necessary leisure and cultivation,and apt to be debased by the nature of their occupations.
In a celebrated passage he propounds a theory of slavery,in which it is based on the universality of the relation betweencommand and obedience,and on the natural division by which the ruling is marked off from the subject race.He regards theslave as having no independent will,but as an "animated tool"in the hands of his master;and in his subjection to suchcontrol,if only it be intelligent,Aristotle holds that the true well-being of the inferior as well as of the superior is to befound.This view,so shocking to our modern sentiment,is of course not personal to Aristotle;it is simply the theoreticpresentation of the facts of Greek life,in which the existence of a body of citizens pursuing the higher culture and devoted tothe tasks of war and government was founded on the systematic degradation of a wronged and despised class,excludedfrom all the higher offices of human beings and sacrificed to the maintenance of a special type of society.
