Page:The wealth of nations, volume 1.djvu/23

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INTRODUCTION
13

within that shelter, they must also have men to perform the works of the field, such as tilling and sowing, planting trees, tending the flocks, from which are obtained the necessaries of life. And, further, when these necessaries are brought within, they must have others to look after them, as well as a wife to superintend the business of the house."[1]

Before leaving Xenophon we will give one more extract which may be taken as the anticipation in the ancient world of the modern economic objection to war as held by the Cobden-Bright school. "If any man," he writes, "can have so wild a notion as to imagine that war will contribute more to the increase of riches than peace, I know no better way to decide the controversy than by appealing to the experience of former ages, and producing precedents to the contrary out of our own story.… It is an absurd supposition to imagine that peace will weaken our strength, and ruin our authority and reputation abroad, for of all governments those are happiest who have continued longest without war."[2]

The views of Aristotle on the subject of economy are contained partly in his "Ethics" and partly in his "Politics." The chapters of the fifth book of the "Ethics," relating to the subject, are too familiar to need quotation. The "Politics" contains the following statement on the subject of money, in which, as will be seen, an approximation is made to a correct view of the function of money. Plato also appears to have had reasonable views upon this subject. Speaking of early societies, Aristotle writes:

"There were different things which they had to give in exchange for what they wanted, a kind of barter which is


  1. "Oik.," ch, vii. § 19.
  2. Means of Increasing the Revenues of Athens.