In recapitulating the last two chapters, Aristotle first argues, more explicitly than hitherto, that the duty of the household-manager is to use and distribute goods, not to acquire them. He then adds a point of major importance: that the acquisition of goods (chrēmatistikē) from the charging of interest (tokos) is the most ‘unnatural’ of all modes of business. In effect, he now subdivides the third method of acquiring goods (see introduction to I ix) into: (a) trade, the exchange of goods for money and money for goods, with a desire to make a profit; (b) making a profit from dealing in money alone, i.e. by charging interest. Both methods are ‘unnatural’, but (a) retains some features of genuine exchange since actual commodities do enter into the transactions, and at least the money is used for its proper purpose, exchange, even if there is a desire for profit. Method (a) is therefore less contrary to nature than (b).
No doubt money-lending was, as Aristotle says, disliked; but it is noticeable that his own objections to it here are not directly social and humanitarian or even economic: rather, they are ideological and metaphysical. However, if the state is (as he believes) natural, and money-lending unnatural, then the latter will presumably hinder the well-being of the former. To this extent, his objections to money-lending do indeed rest on social grounds.
1258a19 The answer also is clear to the question raised at the beginning,1 namely whether or not acquiring goods is the business of the household-manager and statesman.2 The answer is perhaps that wealth should be at hand for his use from the start. Just as statesmanship has no need to make men, who are the material which nature provides and which statesmanship takes and uses, so nature can be expected to provide food, whether from land or sea or from some other source, and it is on this basis that the manager can perform his duty of distributing these supplies. So weaving is not the art of producing wool but of using it, though it is also the art of knowing good yarns from bad and the suitable from the unsuitable.
1258a27 If, on the other hand, we do allow that acquiring goods is a part of management, why, it may well be asked, is not the art of medicine also a part? After all, the members of a household need to be healthy quite as much as to keep alive or meet their daily needs. The answer is that up to a point it is the business of manager or ruler to see to health, but only up to a point; beyond that it is the doctor’s business. So in the matter of goods: to some extent these are the concern of the manager, but beyond that they belong to the subsidiary skill. But best it is, as has been just said, that goods should be provided at the outset by nature. For it is a function of nature to provide food for whatever is brought to birth, since that from which it is born has a surplus which provides food in every case. We conclude therefore that the form of acquisition of goods that depends on crop and animal husbandry is for all men in accordance with nature.
1258a38 The acquisition of goods is then, as we have said, of two kinds; one, which is necessary and approved of, is to do with household-management; the other, which is to do with trade and depends on exchange, is justly regarded with disapproval, since it arises not from nature but from men’s gaining from each other. Very much disliked also is the practice of charging interest; and the dislike is fully justified, for the gain arises out of currency itself, not as a product of that for which currency was provided. Currency was intended to be a means of exchange, whereas interest represents an increase in the currency itself. Hence its name,3 for each animal produces its like, and interest is currency born of currency. And so of all types of business this is the most contrary to nature