Politics

• Every state is a community of some kind, and every community is established with a view to some good
• The state or political community, which is the highest of all, and which embraces all the rest, aims at good in a greater degree than any other, and at the highest good
• Statesman


  When the government is according to the rules of the political science, the citizens rule and are ruled in turn
• King


  When the government is personal, the ruler is a king
• Governments differ in kind
• To understand governments, we must look at the elements of which the state is composed
• The first and fewest possible parts of a family are master and slave, husband and wife, father and children
• Property is a part of the household, and the art of acquiring property is a part of the art of managing the household
• Slave


  A living possession, an instrument which takes precedence of all other instruments
• Slavery is not a violation of nature, as some are marked out for subjection, others for rule
• The rule of the soul over the body, and of the mind and the rational element over the passionate, is natural and expedient
• The male is by nature superior, and the female inferior; and the one rules, and the other is ruled
• Where there is a difference between soul and body, or between men and animals, the lower sort are by nature slaves, and it is better for them to be under the rule of a master
• The lower animals cannot even apprehend a principle; they obey their instincts
• Animals have a better nature than wild, and all tame animals are better off when they are ruled by man; for then they are preserved
• The male is by nature superior, and the female inferior; and the one rules, and the other is ruled; this principle, of necessity, extends to all mankind
• Where there is such a difference as that between soul and body, or between men and animals, the lower sort are by nature slaves, and it is better for them as for all inferiors that they should be under the rule of a master
• He who can be, and therefore is, another's and he who participates in rational principle enough to apprehend, but not to have, such a principle, is a slave by nature
• Nature would like to distinguish between the bodies of freemen and slaves, making the one strong for servile labor, the other upright, and although useless for such services, useful for political life in the arts both of war and peace
• If men differed from one another in the mere forms of their bodies as much as the statues of the Gods do from men, all would acknowledge that the inferior class should be slaves of the superior
• It is clear, then, that some men are by nature free, and others slaves, and that for these latter slavery is both expedient and right
• Slavery and slave are used in two senses: by law as well as by nature
• The law by which whatever is taken in war is supposed to belong to the victors is impeached by many jurists
• The origin of the dispute is that in some sense virtue, when furnished with means, has actually the greatest power of exercising force; and as superior power is only found where there is superior excellence of some kind, power seems to imply virtue, and the dispute to be simply one about justice
• Law and custom are a sort of justice, and assume that slavery in accordance with the custom of war is justified by law
• No one would ever say he is a slave who is unworthy to be a slave
• Hellenes do not like to call Hellenes slaves, but confine the term to barbarians
• Some are slaves everywhere, others nowhere
• Hellenes regard themselves as noble everywhere, and not only in their own country, but they deem the barbarians noble only when at home, thereby implying that there are two sorts of nobility and freedom, the one absolute, the other relative
• The abuse of the authority of masters is injurious to both; for the interests of part and whole, of body and soul, are the same, and the slave is a part of the master, a living but separated part of his bodily frame
• Where the relation of master and slave between them is natural they are friends and have a common interest, but where it rests merely on law and force the reverse is true
• The rule of a master is not a constitutional rule, and all the different kinds of rule are not the same with each other
• The master is not called a master because he has science, but because he is of a certain character, and the same remark applies to the slave and the freeman
• There may be a science for the master and science for the slave
• The art of acquiring slaves, I mean of justly acquiring them, differs both from the art of the master and the art of the slave, being a species of hunting or war
• The art of getting wealth is not identical with the art of managing a household or a part of it, or instrumental to it
• The art of household management is not identical with the art of getting wealth, for the one uses the material which the other provides
• There are many sorts of property and riches, and therefore there are many kinds of lives both of animals and men; they must all have food, and the differences in their food have made differences in their ways of life
• Property, in the sense of a bare livelihood, seems to be given by nature herself to all, both when they are first born, and when they are grown up
• Nature makes nothing incomplete, and nothing in vain, and the inference must be that she has made all animals for the sake of man