the rule, but the exception, for Demosthenes and not the philosophers should be accepted as voicing public opinion on this point. He considered credit to be of as much importance as money itself in the business world,706 and declared one who ignored this elementary fact to be a mere know-nothing.707 Indeed, the money-lenders were, to him, the very foundation of the prosperity of the state.708 The prejudice of Plato and Aristotle represent merely the exceptional attitude of the pure moralist, who because of the questionable tactics of money-lenders, and the injustice and greed in some phases of contemporary business life, became critics of all money-making operations.709
EXCHANGE
Aristotle, in both the Politics and the Ethics, deals at considerable length with the subject of exchange.710 He states that it arose out of the natural situation (κατὰ φύσιν) and defines this as “the fact that men had more