high character and intelligence are most happy, even though their wealth is moderate.565 The common attitude of the money-maker that wealth is unlimited is contrary to nature.566 Genuine wealth cannot be unlimited,567 since external goods are strictly defined by their utility for a certain thing. Excessive wealth thus either harms the owner, or is, at least, useless to him.568 Neither can wealth be rightly made the summum bonum, for it is really not an end at all, but only a collection of means to an end (ὀργάνων πλῆθος).569 The inevitable result of making it the end and measure of all is moral degeneration.570 If the highest interests of life are to be preserved, it must always be kept subservient. First things must be placed first, both by the individual571 and by the state.572
PRODUCTION
It is often asserted that Aristotle denied the very existence of a problem of production.573 This statement has been based primarily on certain passages in the Politics.574 These passages, however, are not a denial of the importance of production. Their purport is merely to show that the chief aim of life is not to produce or to provide wealth, but to use it for the advancement of life’s highest interest. From this standpoint, both acquisition (κτητική) and production (ποιητική) are subordinate arts.575 So far is Aristotle from giving no place to production, that a later chapter of the Politics is devoted to the consideration of the scheme of supply, including production.576 To be sure, he does not lay much emphasis on genuine production in his enumeration. Industry is barely mentioned, while agriculture is discussed in detail. His “free-holder” is a consumer of the gifts of nature, rather than a real producer.577 He classifies the truly productive employments that work for themselves (αὐτόφυτον) as those of the nomad, the farmer, the brigand, the fisherman, and the hunter, and makes those that live by barter (ἁλλαγῆς) or trade (καπηλείας) parasitic.578
In another passage, finance, strictly defined (οἰκειατάτη), is limited to all forms of agriculture, and even the hired labor (μισθαρνία) of industry is