1 02 



have exposed the visionary and unpractical nature of the whole fabric 

 constructed on his lines. It would, I believe, have been ultimately 

 wrecked on the doctrine of the Mean. Restriction of commerce had 

 to be reconciled with financial strength, for he saw that wealth was 

 needed 1 for both peace and war. This eviropla could only arise from 

 savings, the accumulated surplus of industry. The labouring classes 

 would therefore have to provide not only their own sustenance etc and 

 that of their rulers, but a considerable surplus as well. This would 

 probably necessitate so numerous a labouring population that the 

 citizens would have enough to do in controlling them and keeping 

 them to their work. To increase the number of citizens would add to 

 the unproductive 2 mouths, and so on. Foreign war would throw every- 

 thing out of gear, and no hiring of mercenaries is suggested. It is the 

 carrying to excess of the principle of specialization that demands excess 

 of 'leisure/ nothing less than the exemption of all citizens (all persons 

 that count, in short,) from manual toil. Yet it was one who well knew 

 the political merits of peasant farmers that was the author of this ex- 

 travagant scheme for basing upon a servile agriculture the entertainment 

 of a hothouse virtue. 



The general effect produced by reviewing the evidence of Aristotle 

 on agriculture and the labour-question is that he was a witness of the 

 decay of the working-farmer class, and either could not or would not 

 propose any plan for reviving it. The rarity of the words avrovpyo? 

 and cognates is not to be wondered at in his works. They do not occur 

 in the Politics. The Rhetoric furnishes two 3 passages. One refers to 

 the kinds of men especially liable to unfair treatment (dSifcia) because 

 it is not worth their while to waste time on legal proceedings, citing as 

 instances aliens and avrovpyoL Rustics may be included, but are not 

 expressly mentioned. The other 4 refers to qualities that men generally 

 like and respect, as justice. 'Popular opinion finds this character in 

 those who do not make their living out of others; that is, who live of 

 their own labour, for instance those who live by farming (dirb yewpylas), 

 and, in other pursuits, those most of all who work with their own hands.' 

 Here we have the working farmer expressly cited as a type worthy of 

 respect. But to single him out thus certainly does not suggest that the 

 type was a common one. The great Aristotelian index of Bonitz 

 supplies three 5 more passages, all from the little treatise de mundo. 

 They occur in a special context. God, as the cause that holds together 

 the universe, is not to be conceived as a power enduring the toil of a 



1 Pol vii 8 7. 2 ii 6 6 dpyol (in his criticism of Plato's Laws). 



3 Rhet I 12 25, cf Plato Rep 565 a avrovpyoL re KCU 



4 Rhet ii 4 9, cf Euripides Orestes 918-20. 

 8 de mundo 6 4, 7, 13. 



