CHAPTER VI ARISTOTLE

thought it not only impracticable, but undesirable to give his doctrine of leisure any extensive application. As seen above, he includes all hired labor under false finance, and relegates all industry, including agriculture, to the slaves and strangers. The life of mechanic and commercial alike is to him ignoble.⁷⁸⁴ He advises that measures be taken to hold the workers in submission and obedience.⁷⁸⁵ His unfair criticism of Plato’s Republic, however, on the ground that it fails to emphasize sufficiently the welfare of the parts of the state, and that it does not distinguish clearly enough the status of the commons, reveals a spirit that does not entirely disregard the masses.⁷⁸⁶ His demand that no citizen shall lack subsistence,⁷⁸⁷ his provision of the sussitia for all,⁷⁸⁸ his insistence that, in the market, mere economic self-interest shall not rule,⁷⁸⁹ and his emphasis on the importance of a strong middle class in the state,⁷⁹⁰ all show that, in the interest of the perpetuity of the state at least, he had some regard for the economic well-being of all classes. It would be wrong to infer from his suggestions for the aid of the masses in a democracy, that