trade and money-loaning of his day.766 Yet here also, just as in the Ethics passage above discussed, his prejudice blinds him to the fact that exchangers may be real producers, and that, after all, even the alleged false finance is not unlimited, but that it is distinctly bounded by economic demand.767 Still worse, he includes hired labor of every kind under unlimited acquisition, merely because it has some of the other qualities of that type of economy, though it certainly does not tend to unlimited enrichment even as much as agriculture.768 However, he should be given credit of being a forerunner of the modern humanitarian economy, which insists that the final goal of all economics should be proper consumption, and that acquisition must be relegated to its true place as a means, the supreme end being human welfare.769
POPULATION
Aristotle exhibits an interest in the problem of population in relation to subsistence in his criticism of Plato for limiting the amount of property and making it indivisible, while failing to provide against a too high birth-rate.770 He states the principle that, if property is to be limited, there must be a corresponding limitation on the increase of population,771 and that the let-alone policy must be followed by increased poverty.772 He therefore criticizes the Spartan law, for encouraging the largest possible families.773 It is evident, however, that, as in the case of Plato, his interest in the problem is prompted chiefly by a moral and political motive. It arises merely from his desire to limit individual acquisition, in a small state, artificially constructed, and is to him in no sense a question of world food-supply.774