Book I, 1255b–1258b

For they maintain that, just as a human comes from a human and a beast from beasts, so a good person comes from good people. Nature often wishes to bring this about, but cannot always do so.

That the dispute has some reason behind it,1255b5 and that not all are divided into slaves by nature on the one hand and free people on the other, is clear. Yet in some cases this distinction holds, and for these it is advantageous and just that one should be a slave and the other a master. The one must be ruled and the other must exercise the rule for which he is naturally fitted, and therefore also mastery. But to exercise it badly is disadvantageous to both (for10 the same thing is advantageous to the part and to the whole, to body and to soul; and the slave is a part of the master, a kind of living but separate part of his body. For this reason there is also a certain common advantage and friendship between slave and master when nature has assigned them these positions; but for those whose relation is not of this kind,15 but rests on law and compulsion, the opposite holds).

From this it is also evident that mastery and political rule are not the same, nor are all forms of rule identical with one another, as some say. For one is rule over those free by nature, the other over slaves. Household management is a monarchy, since every household is ruled by one,1255b20 whereas political rule is rule over free and equal people. A master, then, is not so called because of knowledge, but because of the kind of person he is; the same holds for the slave and the free person. Yet there may be knowledge proper to a master and knowledge proper to a slave. Knowledge proper to a slave is of the sort taught by the man in Syracuse: there someone, for a fee,25 used to teach slave boys their ordinary duties. Instruction of this kind might extend further, to cooking, for example, and the other such branches of service. For some tasks are more honorable than others, and some more necessary; and, as the proverb says, "Slave surpasses slave, and master surpasses master."30 All such kinds of knowledge, then, belong to slaves. The knowledge proper to a master is the use of slaves. For being a master consists not in acquiring slaves, but in using them. This knowledge has nothing great or dignified about it: whatever the slave must know how to do, the master must35 know how to command. For this reason, those who can avoid the trouble themselves appoint a steward to this office, while they themselves take part in public life or pursue philosophy. The art of acquisition is different from both of these; its just form, for example, is a kind of warfare or hunting. Let our distinctions concerning slave and master stand in this40 form.

1256a1Let us now consider property and wealth-getting as a whole, following the method already indicated, since the slave too was a part of property. First, one might ask whether wealth-getting is the same as household management,5 or a part of it, or an art that serves it; and, if it serves it, whether it does so as shuttle-making serves weaving or as bronze-working serves statue-making. For these do not serve in the same way: one supplies instruments, the other material. By material I mean the underlying substance from which a work is completed: wool, for example, for the weaver,10 and bronze for the sculptor. It is clear, then, that household management is not the same as wealth-getting, since the task of one is to procure, and of the other to use. For what art other than household management will use the things in the household? But whether wealth-getting is a part of it or a different kind of art is open to dispute.15 For if it belongs to the person skilled in wealth-getting to consider where resources and property are to come from, and property and wealth comprise many parts, the first question is whether farming is a part of household management or a different kind of art; and the same question concerns, in general, the care and acquisition of food. Now there are many kinds of food,20 and hence many ways of life among both animals and human beings. For it is impossible to live without food, so differences in food have made the ways of life of animals different. Among beasts, some live in herds and others live scattered, whichever is advantageous for their food, since some of them25 eat animals, others fruit, and others everything. Nature has therefore distinguished their ways of life with a view to ease and the choice of these foods. Since the same thing is not naturally pleasant to every animal, but different things to different animals, the ways of life even of the animal-eaters and fruit-eaters differ from one another. So too30 with human beings: their ways of life differ greatly. The most idle are nomads, for their food comes from tame animals without labor, leaving them at leisure. Since their livestock must move to find pasture, they themselves must follow along, as though with living farmland35 to cultivate. Others live by hunting, and different people by different kinds of hunting: some by plunder, others by fishing—those who live beside lakes, marshes, rivers, or a suitable sea—and others by hunting birds or wild beasts. But the largest part of humankind lives from the earth and its cultivated fruits.

1256a40These, then, are roughly the ways of life whose labor draws directly on nature and which do not, through exchange and retail trade,1256b1 procure their food:

the nomadic, the plundering, the fishing, the hunting, and the farming life. Some also live pleasantly by combining these, supplementing the more deficient way of life wherever it falls short of self-sufficiency: some, for example,1256b5 combine the nomadic and plundering lives, others the farming and hunting lives. The same holds for the others: they live in whatever manner their needs compel them to combine. Property of this kind, then, appears to be given to all by nature herself, both immediately at their first coming into being and when they are fully grown.10 For at their first coming into being, some animals produce along with their offspring enough food to suffice until the newborn can provide for itself, as do those that produce larvae or lay eggs. Those that bear living young have food within themselves for their offspring for a certain time: what is called milk15 is this substance. Thus it is likewise clear that we must suppose plants exist for the sake of animals, and the other animals for the sake of human beings, once they have come into being: tame animals both for use and for food; and wild animals, if not all, at least most, for food and other assistance, so that20 clothing and other instruments may also be made from them. If, then, nature makes nothing incomplete or in vain, nature must have made them all for the sake of human beings. For this reason the art of war too will by nature be in a sense an art of acquisition, since hunting is a part of it. We must use it against wild beasts and25 against those human beings who are naturally fitted to be ruled but refuse, since this kind of war is just by nature.

One kind of acquisition, then, is by nature a part of household management: either it must be ready to hand, or household management must procure it so that it is ready to hand, providing a store of resources necessary for life and useful1256b30 for the community of a city or a household. True wealth seems to consist of these. For the amount of property of this sort sufficient for a good life is not unlimited, as Solon says in his verse: "No limit to wealth stands revealed to men." (Sol. Fr. 13.71) There is a limit, as there is in the other arts;35 for no instrument of any art is unlimited either in number or in size, and wealth is a collection of instruments for household management and political rule. That there is, then, a kind of acquisition natural to household managers and statesmen, and for what reason, is clear.

1256b40There is another kind of acquisition, which people chiefly call wealth-getting, and rightly so; because of it there seems to be no1257a1 limit to wealth and property.

Many consider it one and the same as the kind just discussed, because the two are closely related. Yet it is neither the same as that kind nor far removed from it. One of them exists by nature, the other not by nature, but through experience1257a5 of a certain kind and art it arises instead. Let us begin our account of it here. Every article of property has two uses. Both are uses of the thing itself, but not in the same way: one is proper to the thing, the other is not. For example, a shoe may be worn or exchanged. Both10 are uses of a shoe; for the person who exchanges a shoe with someone who needs it, in return for money or food, uses the shoe as a shoe, but not for its proper use, since it did not come into being for the sake of exchange. The same holds for the other articles of property. For15 all can be exchanged. Exchange arose at first from a natural circumstance: people had more of some things and less of others than was sufficient. This also makes it clear that retail trade is not by nature a part of wealth-getting; for people had to make exchanges only to the extent sufficient for themselves. In the first20 community, then—that is, the household—it plainly has no function, but it does when the community has grown larger. For the members of the household shared all the same things, whereas those who lived separately shared many different things, which they had to distribute among themselves according to their needs through exchange, as many25 non-Greek peoples still do. They exchange useful things themselves for one another, and nothing more: giving and receiving wine for grain, for example, and each of the other things of this kind. Such exchange, then, is neither contrary to nature nor any form of wealth-getting30 —for it served to complete natural self-sufficiency. Yet the other form arose from this, as one would expect. For as assistance came increasingly from abroad, through importing what people lacked and exporting what they had in surplus, the use of money was necessarily devised. For not everything is easy to carry that is naturally35 necessary. For this reason people agreed among themselves to give and receive in exchange something which was itself a useful thing and could readily be handled for the needs of life: iron, silver, or anything else of this sort. At first it was defined simply by size and weight, but in the end40 they also stamped it with a mark, to free themselves from having to measure it; for the stamp was set upon it as a sign of its quantity.

1257b1Once money had been devised from necessary exchange, the other form of wealth-getting arose: retail trade. At first it was perhaps practiced simply; then experience made it more skillful, showing where and how exchanges would produce the greatest5 profit. For this reason wealth-getting seems to concern money above all, and its task seems to be the ability to discern where an abundance of it will come from, since it produces wealth and resources. Indeed, people often regard wealth as an abundance of money, because it is the concern of wealth-getting10 and retail trade. At other times, however, money seems to be an empty thing, wholly a matter of convention and nothing by nature: if those who use it change their convention, it has no worth and is useful for none of life's necessities. Someone rich in money will often lack necessary food. Yet it is absurd that there should be such15 wealth that a person with an abundance of it may die of hunger, as the story tells of the famous Midas, whose insatiable prayer made everything set before him turn to gold. For this reason people seek something else as wealth and wealth-getting, and rightly seek it. For there is a different kind of wealth-getting and wealth that is20 natural. This kind belongs to household management; the other belongs to retail trade and produces wealth, not in every way, but through the exchange of resources. The latter seems to concern money, for money is the starting point and the end of exchange. And this wealth, the wealth arising from this kind of wealth-getting, is indeed unlimited.25 For just as medicine has no limit in its pursuit of health, and each art has no limit in its pursuit of its end—since each wishes to achieve that end as fully as possible—but is not unlimited in the means to its end, since the end sets a limit for them all, so too this kind of wealth-getting has no limit to its end. Its end is of this kind:30 wealth and the acquisition of resources. But the wealth-getting of household management has a limit, for this is not the task of household management. Thus, in one respect, a limit to all wealth seems necessary, yet in practice we see the opposite occurring: all who pursue wealth-getting increase their money without limit.35 The cause is the close relationship between the two forms. For their uses overlap, since each form of wealth-getting uses the same thing. Both use the same property, but not in the same respect: one has a different end, while the other's end is increase. Thus some think this is the task of household management, and persist in the belief that preserving40 or increasing their stock of money without limit is necessary. The cause of this disposition is a concern with living, but1258a1 not with living well.

Since that desire is unlimited, they also desire unlimited means of satisfying it. Even those who aim at living well seek the means to bodily pleasures; and since this too appears to depend on property,1258a5 they spend all their time on wealth-getting, and the other form of wealth-getting has arisen for this reason. For since their enjoyment lies in excess, they seek the art that produces an excess of enjoyment. If they cannot provide it through wealth-getting, they try to do so by some other means,10 using each of their capacities contrary to nature. For the task of courage is not to produce resources but confidence; nor is producing resources the task of generalship or medicine, but victory for the one and health for the other. Yet these people turn them all into arts of wealth-getting, as though that were the end and everything had to serve that end.

Concerning the kind of wealth-getting that is not1258a15 necessary, what it is, and why we have need of it, we have now spoken, as we have of the necessary kind, which differs from it, belongs by nature to household management, and concerns food. It is not unlimited like the other, but has a boundary.

The question raised at the outset is also clear: whether1258a20 wealth-getting belongs to the household manager and the statesman, or whether it does not, but must instead be ready to hand. For just as political rule does not make human beings, but receives them from nature and uses them, so nature must supply food, whether from earth, sea, or something else. From these supplies, arranging them as they should be arranged25 is the household manager's task. For weaving does not make wool, but uses it, and also recognizes what sort is good and suitable, or poor and unsuitable. One might also ask why wealth-getting is a part of household management, while medicine is not; yet people must be healthy30 within the household, just as they must live or meet any other necessity. But since in one sense it belongs to the household manager and the ruler to attend to health, and in another it does not, but belongs to the doctor, so too in one sense resources are the household manager's concern, and in another they are not, but belong to the art that serves him. Above all, as was said earlier, they must35 be ready to hand by nature. For it is nature's task to provide food for what is born: in every case, the remainder of that from which it is born is food for it. Thus wealth-getting from fruits and animals is natural for all. Since it is twofold, as we said, one form belonging to retail trade and the other to household management,40 and since the latter is necessary and praised,

while the1258b1 exchange form is rightly blamed, since it is not according to nature but takes from other people, moneylending is most reasonably hated: its gain comes from money itself, and not from that for which money was devised. For money came into being for the sake of exchange,5 but interest makes it increase. This is also the source of its name, which means offspring: what is born resembles what gives it birth, and interest is money born of money. Thus, of all forms of wealth-getting, this is the most contrary to nature.

Since we have made sufficient distinctions for understanding, the matters1258b10 that concern practice must be considered in turn. In all such matters, contemplation is a free pursuit, but practical experience is a necessity. Useful parts of wealth-getting include experience concerning property: what sorts are most profitable, where, and how—for example, what sort of stock of horses, cattle, or sheep, and likewise15 of the other animals. For one must know by experience which of these are most profitable compared with one another, and which sorts thrive in which places, since different animals flourish in different regions. Next comes knowledge of farming, both of open fields and of planted land, of beekeeping, and of the other animals, aquatic or winged, from20 which assistance can be obtained. These, then, are the primary parts of the most proper form of wealth-getting. Of the exchange form, the largest part is commerce, which has three parts: shipowning, transport, and offering goods for sale. These differ from one another in that some are safer, while others yield a greater return.25 The second part is lending at interest, and the third is wage labor, one sort of which belongs to the mechanical arts, the other to those without a craft who are useful only through their bodies. There is a third form of wealth-getting, between this and the first, since it has a share both in the natural form and in the exchange form: everything drawn from the earth30 and from things arising from the earth which, though they bear no fruit, are useful—for example, woodcutting and every kind of mining. Mining itself comprises many kinds, for there are many sorts of things mined from the earth. Of occupations, those require the most skill in which chance has the smallest part; those are most mechanical in which the35 body is most damaged; those most slavish in which the body is put to the most uses; and those most ignoble in which virtue is least needed. We have now spoken of each of these in general; examining their particulars precisely would be useful for the occupations themselves, but tiresome to dwell on.

They expect a good person to come from good people, just as a human comes from a human and an animal from animals. Nature often wants to do this, but can't.

That the dispute has some basis,1255b5 and that some people are not slaves or free by nature, is clear. It's also clear that in some cases this distinction does exist. For these people, being a slave benefits one and being a master benefits the other, and this is just. One must be ruled and the other must exercise the kind of rule he is naturally suited to exercise, including mastery. Exercising it badly harms both. (For10 the same thing benefits the part and the whole, and the body and the soul. The slave is a part of the master, something like a living but separate part of his body. So there is a common advantage and friendship between slave and master when nature has assigned them these positions. But when their positions are not of this kind,15 but come from law and force, the opposite is true.)

This also makes it clear that mastery and political rule aren't the same, and that not all kinds of rule are the same as one another, as some people say. Political rule is over people who are free by nature; mastery is over slaves. Household management is a monarchy, since every household is ruled by one person,1255b20 while political rule is rule over free and equal people. A person is called a master, then, not because of his knowledge but because of what he is. The same goes for a slave and a free person. Still, there could be knowledge belonging to masters and knowledge belonging to slaves. Knowledge for slaves would be the sort a man in Syracuse taught. There someone took a fee25 for teaching slave boys their routine duties. Learning of this kind could also be extended, for example to cooking and other kinds of service like that. Some jobs carry more honor than others, and some are more necessary. As the proverb says, "One slave is better than another; one master is better than another."30 All such kinds of knowledge belong to slaves. A master's knowledge consists in using slaves. What makes him a master isn't acquiring slaves but using them. There's nothing great or impressive about this knowledge. Whatever a slave must know how to do, the master must35 know how to order. So people who can avoid the trouble themselves assign this office to a steward, and they take part in public life or study philosophy. The art of acquiring slaves is different from both these kinds of knowledge. Its just form, for example, is a kind of warfare or hunting. Let this settle the distinction between slave and master in this40 way.

1256a1Let's now look at property and money-making as a whole, following the method we have set out, since a slave was also a part of property. The first question is whether money-making is the same as household management,5 a part of it, or something that serves it. If it serves it, does it do so as shuttle-making serves weaving, or as bronze-working serves statue-making? These don't serve in the same way: one supplies tools, the other material. By material I mean the underlying stuff from which a finished product is made, such as wool for a weaver10 and bronze for a statue-maker. Clearly, household management isn't the same as money-making. One acquires things, the other uses them. What art other than household management will use the things in a household? But whether money-making is a part of it or a different kind of activity is open to dispute.15 Suppose the money-maker's job is to consider where wealth and property will come from. Property and wealth have many parts. So the first question is whether farming belongs to household management or is a different kind of activity. The same question applies generally to looking after and acquiring food. There are many kinds of food,20 and so there are many ways of life for both animals and humans. Life is impossible without food, so differences in food have made animals' ways of life different. Some wild animals live in groups and others live scattered apart, according to which way helps them get food. This is because some25 eat other animals, some eat plants, and some eat everything. Nature has therefore made their ways of life different to make it easy for them to get the food they choose. Since the same things aren't naturally pleasant to every animal, but different things to different animals, even the ways of life of meat-eaters and of plant-eaters differ from one another. The same is true30 of humans. Their ways of life differ a great deal. The least active are nomads. Food from domesticated animals comes to them without work, leaving them at leisure. Since their livestock have to move to find pasture, they too have to follow along, as though they had living farmland35 to farm. Others live by hunting, with different people hunting different things. Some live by robbery, others by fishing—those who live beside lakes, marshes, rivers, or a suitable sea. Others live by hunting birds or wild animals. But most people live from the land and cultivated crops.

1256a40These, then, are roughly all the ways of life whose work draws directly on nature, rather than using exchange and retail trade1256b1 to get food:

herding, robbery, fishing, hunting, and farming. Some combine these and live comfortably. They supplement the less adequate way of life at the point where it falls short of being self-sufficient. For example, some combine1256b5 herding with robbery, others farming with hunting. The same applies to the others: they live in whatever way their needs force them to adopt. This kind of property seems to be given to all living things by nature itself, both at their very first coming into being and when they are fully grown.10 At their first coming into being, some animals bring forth enough food along with their young to last until the offspring can get its own. This is true of those that produce larvae or eggs. Those that give birth to live young have food inside themselves for their offspring for a certain time. What is called milk15 is that substance. So it's similarly clear that we must think that, once they have come into being, plants exist for animals and the other animals for humans. Domesticated animals serve both for use and for food. Of wild animals, if not all, at least most serve for food and other help, so that20 clothing and other tools can be made from them. If nature makes nothing incomplete or pointless, nature must have made them all for humans. For this reason, warfare too will be a kind of acquiring property by nature, since hunting is part of it. We should use it against wild animals and25 against those humans who are naturally suited to be ruled but refuse. This kind of war is just by nature.

One kind of acquiring property, then, is by nature a part of household management. It concerns things that must either be available or be acquired by household management so that they are available: a store of goods needed for life and useful1256b30 to the community of a city or household. True wealth seems to consist of these. The amount of such property that is enough for a good life isn't unlimited, as Solon says in his poem: "No stated limit of wealth is set for humans." (Sol. Fr. 13.71) There is a limit, just as there is in the other arts.35 No art has a tool that is unlimited in either number or size. Wealth is a collection of tools for household management and political activity. So it's clear that there is a way of acquiring property by nature for household managers and political rulers, and why there is.

1256b40But there is another kind of acquiring property, which people especially call money-making, and rightly so. Because of it, there seems to be no1257a1 limit to wealth and property.

Many think it is one and the same as the kind we have discussed, because the two are closely related. But it is neither the same as that kind nor far removed from it. One is by nature, while the other is not by nature but through experience1257a5 of a certain kind and skill it comes about instead. Let's take this as our starting point for discussing it. You can use each possession in two ways. In both cases you use the thing itself, but differently. One use belongs to it properly; the other doesn't. For example, a shoe can be worn or exchanged. Both10 are uses of a shoe. Someone who exchanges a shoe for money or food with someone who needs a shoe uses it as a shoe, but not for its proper use. It wasn't made for exchange. The same holds for other pieces of property. There is a way15 of exchanging all of them. This first began from a natural situation: people had more than enough of some things and less than enough of others. This also shows that retail trade isn't a kind of money-making by nature. People had to make exchanges only to get enough for themselves. In the first20 community, which is the household, exchange clearly has no function. It has one only when the community is larger. The members of the household shared all the same things. But people living separately shared many different things. They had to share these with one another according to their needs through exchange, as many25 non-Greek peoples still do. They exchange useful things directly for one another, and nothing more. For example, they give and receive wine for grain, and exchange each of the other things of this kind. Such exchange is neither against nature nor any kind of money-making,30 since it served to complete natural self-sufficiency. But the other kind arose from this one, as we would expect. When help came more from abroad, through importing things they lacked and exporting things they had in excess, the use of money was necessarily devised. We can't easily carry everything we naturally35 need. So for exchanges people agreed with one another to give and receive something that was itself useful and easy to handle for the needs of life, such as iron, silver, or anything else of that kind. At first it was defined simply by size and weight. Finally40 they also put a stamp on it, to save themselves the trouble of measuring. The stamp was put there as a sign of the amount.

1257b1Once money had been devised from necessary exchange, the other kind of money-making arose: retail trade. At first it was perhaps done simply, but then experience made it more skillful, showing where and how to exchange things to make the greatest5 profit. So money-making seems to concern money above all, and its task is to be able to see where a large amount will come from, since it produces wealth and money. In fact, people often define wealth as a large amount of money, because it is the concern of money-making10 and retail trade. At other times, though, money seems to be nonsense and entirely a matter of convention, with nothing natural about it. If the people who use it change their agreement, it's worth nothing and is useless for any of life's necessities. Someone rich in money will often lack necessary food. Yet it's strange that something should15 be wealth when a person with plenty of it could starve to death. This is what the story says happened to Midas: because of his greedy wish, everything served to him turned to gold. That's why people look for something different as wealth and money-making, and they're right to look. There is another kind of money-making, and wealth that is20 by nature. This kind belongs to household management. The other is retail trade, which produces wealth not in every way but through the exchange of goods. This kind seems to concern money, since money is the starting point and endpoint of exchange. The wealth that comes from this kind of money-making has no limit.25 Medicine sets no limit on health, and every art sets no limit on its goal, since it wants to achieve that goal as fully as possible. But the means to the goal aren't unlimited, since the goal is a limit for all of them. In the same way, this kind of money-making has no limit on its goal. That goal is this kind of30 wealth and the acquisition of money. But the money-making that belongs to household management has a limit, since this isn't the task of household management. So in one sense there seems to have to be a limit to all wealth. Yet in practice we see the opposite happening: all money-makers increase their money without limit.35 The cause is the close connection between the two kinds. Their uses overlap because both kinds of money-making use the same thing. They use the same property, but not in the same way. One has a different goal; the other's goal is increase. So some people think this is the task of household management, and they keep on thinking that keeping40 their supply of money or increasing it without limit is necessary. The cause of this attitude is their concern with living, but1258a1 not with living well.

Since this desire has no limit, they also desire unlimited means of fulfilling it. Even those who aim to live well look for the means to enjoy bodily pleasures. Since this too seems to depend on property,1258a5 they spend all their time on money-making, and this is why the other kind of money-making has arisen. Since their enjoyment goes to excess, they look for the art that produces an excess of enjoyment. If they can't supply it through money-making, they try to do it through some other means,10 using each of their abilities in a way that's not by nature. Courage's job is not to produce money but confidence. Nor is money the job of generalship or medicine: one produces victory, the other health. But these people turn all abilities into ways of making money, as though this were the goal and everything had to contribute to the goal.

As for the kind of money-making that isn't1258a15 necessary, we have now discussed what it is and why we need it. We have also discussed the necessary kind. It differs from the other and is by nature a part of household management, concerned with food. It isn't unlimited like the other kind, but has a boundary.

The question we raised at the start is also now clear: whether1258a20 money-making belongs to the household manager and political ruler or not, or whether the resources must instead be available beforehand. Political activity doesn't make humans, but takes them from nature and uses them. In the same way, nature must supply food, whether from land, sea, or something else. From these supplies, arranging them as needed25 is the household manager's responsibility. Weaving doesn't produce wool but uses it, and also knows which wool is good and suitable and which is bad and unsuitable. Someone might also ask why money-making is a part of household management but medicine isn't. Yet people must be healthy30 within the household, just as they must be alive or meet any other necessary condition. In one sense looking after health is the household manager's and ruler's job, but in another it isn't: it's the doctor's. Likewise, in one sense looking after money is the household manager's job, but in another it isn't: it belongs to a supporting art. Above all, as we said earlier, this supply must35 be available by nature. Nature's job is to provide food for what it brings into being. For every living thing, the food is what is left over from that out of which it comes into being. So money-making from crops and animals is by nature for everyone. As we said, it has two kinds: retail trade and the kind belonging to household management.40 The latter is necessary and praised,

while the1258b1 kind based on exchange is rightly criticized, since it isn't by nature but takes from other people. Lending at interest is hated with the best reason, because the property it acquires comes from money itself, rather than from what money was devised for. Money came into being for exchange,5 but interest makes the money itself increase. This is also where its name, meaning offspring, comes from: offspring resemble those that produce them, and interest is money produced from money. So of all kinds of money-making, this is the one most against nature.

We have made enough distinctions for understanding. What1258b10 is needed for practical use must now be covered. With all such subjects, studying them is a free person's activity, but practicing them is a matter of necessity. Useful parts of money-making include experience with property: knowing which kinds are most profitable, where, and how. For example, what kind of horses, cattle, or sheep to own, and likewise15 other animals. We need experience of which are most profitable compared with one another, and which kinds do best in which places, since different kinds thrive in different regions. Next comes knowledge of farming, both on open fields and on planted land, of beekeeping, and of the other animals, swimming or flying, from20 which some benefit can be gained. These are the first parts of the most proper kind of money-making. The largest part of the exchange kind is commerce. It has three parts: shipowning, transporting goods, and offering them for sale. They differ because some are safer and others bring a greater return.25 The second part is lending at interest, and the third is working for wages. Wage work includes skilled manual trades and the work of unskilled people whose bodies alone are useful. A third kind of money-making lies between this kind and the first. It includes a part of both the natural kind and the exchange kind: everything obtained from the earth30 and from things that grow from the earth that don't bear fruit but are useful, such as logging and all mining. Mining includes many kinds, since there are many kinds of things extracted from the earth. The occupations needing the most skill are those with the least room for chance. The most degrading manual jobs are those in which35 bodies are most damaged. The most slave-like are those that use the body most, and the least noble are those needing the least virtue. We have now spoken about each of these in general terms. Going into detail with precision is useful for practicing them, but spending time on it is tedious.