produce of the soil,[1] crops, animals, or minerals, for these sources of support are “natural.” With trade and traffic he had no sympathy, but he admitted that practically they must go on; and he said that people who valued success in such things might try and imitate the philosopher Thales, who foresaw, by his astrology, on one occasion, that there would be a great olive harvest, and while it was still winter hired all the olive presses in the country, and when the demand for these set in, was able to get his own terms and realise a large sum, “thus showing that it is easy for philosophers to be rich, if they only cared about it.” These contemptuous expressions in regard to commerce clearly indicate that Aristotle did not take a calm intellectual view of the subject; he did not see that it was a subject worthy of being reduced to a science, else he would not have left the doing of this to Adam Smith. Yet still in a book full of the shrewdest remarks on social arrangements we cannot fail to be struck by the antiquated look of the announcement that “lending money on interest is justly abominated, and is the most unnatural of all forms of gain, for it diverts money from its proper purpose (which was to be a mere instrument of exchange) and forces it unnaturally to breed.”[2] This saying of Aristotle’s doubtless did something to foster the prejudice against “usury” and Jews, in the latter part of the Middle Ages. The notion is apparently based
