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.
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.
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