and that it is the law which makes one man a slave and another free,
but that in nature there is no difference; for which reason that power
cannot be founded in justice, but in force.




CHAPTER IV


Since then a subsistence is necessary in every family, the means of
procuring it certainly makes up part of the management of a family,
for without necessaries it is impossible to live, and to live well. As
in all arts which are brought to perfection it is necessary that they
should have their proper instruments if they would complete their
works, so is it in the art of managing a family: now of instruments
some of them are alive, others inanimate; thus with respect to the
pilot of the ship, the tiller is without life, the sailor is alive;
for a servant is as an instrument in many arts. Thus property is as an
instrument to living; an estate is a multitude of instruments; so a
slave is an animated instrument, but every one that can minister of
himself is more valuable than any other instrument; for if every
instrument, at command, or from a preconception of its master's will,
could accomplish its work (as the story goes of the statues of
Daedalus; or what the poet tells us of the tripods of Vulcan, "that
they moved of their own accord into the assembly of the gods "), the
shuttle would then weave, and the lyre play of itself; nor would the
architect want servants, or the [1254a] master slaves. Now what are
generally called instruments are the efficients of something else, but
possessions are what we simply use: thus with a shuttle we make