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.
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