The Complete Aristotle (eng.)

are produced for a while, and then
decadence sets in. A clever stock will degenerate towards the
insane type of character, like the descendants of Alcibiades or of
the elder Dionysius; a steady stock towards the fatuous and torpid
type, like the descendants of Cimon, Pericles, and Socrates.
16
    The type of character produced by Wealth lies on the surface for
all to see. Wealthy men are insolent and arrogant; their possession
of wealth affects their understanding; they feel as if they had
every good thing that exists; wealth becomes a sort of standard of
value for everything else, and therefore they imagine there is
nothing it cannot buy. They are luxurious and ostentatious;
luxurious, because of the luxury in which they live and the
prosperity which they display; ostentatious and vulgar, because,
like other people’s, their minds are regularly occupied with the
object of their love and admiration, and also because they think
that other people’s idea of happiness is the same as their own. It
is indeed quite natural that they should be affected thus; for if
you have money, there are always plenty of people who come begging
from you. Hence the saying of Simonides about wise men and rich
men, in answer to Hiero’s wife, who asked him whether it was better
to grow rich or wise. ‘Why, rich,’ he said; ‘for I see the wise men
spending their days at the rich men’s doors.’ Rich men also
consider themselves worthy to hold public office; for they consider
they already have the things that give a claim to office. In a
word, the type of character produced by wealth is that of a
prosperous fool. There is indeed one difference between the type of
the newly-enriched and those who have long been rich: the
newly-enriched have all the bad qualities mentioned in an
exaggerated and worse form—to be newly-enriched means, so to speak,
no education in riches. The wrongs they do others are not meant to
injure their victims, but spring from insolence or self-indulgence,
e.g. those that end in assault or in adultery.
17
    As to Power: here too it may fairly be said that the type of
character it produces is mostly obvious enough. Some elements in
this type it shares with the wealthy type, others are better. Those
in power are more ambitious and more manly in character than the
wealthy, because they aspire to do the great deeds that their power
permits them to do. Responsibility makes them more serious: they
have to keep paying attention to the duties their position
involves. They are dignified rather than arrogant, for the respect
in which they are held inspires them with dignity and therefore
with moderation-dignity being a mild and becoming form of
arrogance. If they wrong others, they wrong them not on a small but
on a great scale.
    Good fortune in certain of its branches produces the types of
character belonging to the conditions just described, since these
conditions are in fact more or less the kinds of good fortune that
are regarded as most important. It may be added that good fortune
leads us to gain all we can in the way of family happiness and
bodily advantages. It does indeed make men more supercilious and
more reckless; but there is one excellent quality that goes with
it-piety, and respect for the divine power, in which they believe
because of events which are really the result of chance.
    This account of the types of character that correspond to
differences of age or fortune may end here; for to arrive at the
opposite types to those described, namely, those of the poor, the
unfortunate, and the powerless, we have only to ask what the
opposite qualities are.
18
    The use of persuasive speech is to lead to decisions. (When we
know a thing, and have decided about it, there is no further use in
speaking about it.) This is so even if one is addressing a single
person and urging him to do or not to do something, as when we
scold a man for his conduct or try to change his views: the single
person is as much your ‘judge’ as if he were one of many; we may
say, without qualification, that any one is your judge whom you
have to persuade. Nor does it matter whether we are arguing against
an actual opponent or against a mere proposition; in the latter
case we still have to use speech and overthrow the opposing
arguments, and we attack these as we should attack an actual
opponent. Our principle holds good of ceremonial speeches also; the
‘onlookers’ for whom such a speech is put together are treated as
the judges of it.