The Complete Aristotle (eng.)

servile. There is
likewise a science of the master, which teaches the use of slaves;
for the master as such is concerned, not with the acquisition, but
with the use of them. Yet this so-called science is not anything
great or wonderful; for the master need only know how to order that
which the slave must know how to execute. Hence those who are in a
position which places them above toil have stewards who attend to
their households while they occupy themselves with philosophy or
with politics. But the art of acquiring slaves, I mean of justly
acquiring them, differs both from the art of the master and the art
of the slave, being a species of hunting or war. Enough of the
distinction between master and slave.
VIII
    Let us now inquire into property generally, and into the art of
getting wealth, in accordance with our usual method, for a slave
has been shown to be a part of property. The first question is
whether the art of getting wealth is the same with the art of
managing a household or a part of it, or instrumental to it; and if
the last, whether in the way that the art of making shuttles is
instrumental to the art of weaving, or in the way that the casting
of bronze is instrumental to the art of the statuary, for they are
not instrumental in the same way, but the one provides tools and
the other material; and by material I mean the substratum out of
which any work is made; thus wool is the material of the weaver,
bronze of the statuary. Now it is easy to see that the art of
household management is not identical with the art of getting
wealth, for the one uses the material which the other provides. For
the art which uses household stores can be no other than the art of
household management. There is, however, a doubt whether the art of
getting wealth is a part of household management or a distinct art.
If the getter of wealth has to consider whence wealth and property
can be procured, but there are many sorts of property and riches,
then are husbandry, and the care and provision of food in general,
parts of the wealth-getting art or distinct arts? Again, there are
many sorts of food, and therefore there are many kinds of lives
both of animals and men; they must all have food, and the
differences in their food have made differences in their ways of
life. For of beasts, some are gregarious, others are solitary; they
live in the way which is best adapted to sustain them, accordingly
as they are carnivorous or herbivorous or omnivorous: and their
habits are determined for them by nature in such a manner that they
may obtain with greater facility the food of their choice. But, as
different species have different tastes, the same things are not
naturally pleasant to all of them; and therefore the lives of
carnivorous or herbivorous animals further differ among themselves.
In the lives of men too there is a great difference. The laziest
are shepherds, who lead an idle life, and get their subsistence
without trouble from tame animals; their flocks having to wander
from place to place in search of pasture, they are compelled to
follow them, cultivating a sort of living farm. Others support
themselves by hunting, which is of different kinds. Some, for
example, are brigands, others, who dwell near lakes or marshes or
rivers or a sea in which there are fish, are fishermen, and others
live by the pursuit of birds or wild beasts. The greater number
obtain a living from the cultivated fruits of the soil. Such are
the modes of subsistence which prevail among those whose industry
springs up of itself, and whose food is not acquired by exchange
and retail trade—there is the shepherd, the husbandman, the
brigand, the fisherman, the hunter. Some gain a comfortable
maintenance out of two employments, eking out the deficiencies of
one of them by another: thus the life of a shepherd may be combined
with that of a brigand, the life of a farmer with that of a hunter.
Other modes of life are similarly combined in any way which the
needs of men may require. Property, in the sense of a bare
livelihood, seems to be given by nature herself to all, both when
they are first born, and when they are grown up. For some animals
bring forth, together with their offspring, so much food as will
last until they are able to supply themselves; of this the
vermiparous or oviparous animals are an instance; and the
viviparous animals have up to a certain time a supply of food for
their young in themselves, which is called milk. In like manner we
may infer