BOOK I - CHAPTER IV

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_ Since then a subsistence is necessary in every family, the means of
procuring it certainly makes up part of the management of a family,
for without necessaries it is impossible to live, and to live well. As
in all arts which are brought to perfection it is necessary that they
should have their proper instruments if they would complete their
works, so is it in the art of managing a family: now of instruments
some of them are alive, others inanimate; thus with respect to the
pilot of the ship, the tiller is without life, the sailor is alive;
for a servant is as an instrument in many arts. Thus property is as an
instrument to living; an estate is a multitude of instruments; so a
slave is an animated instrument, but every one that can minister of
himself is more valuable than any other instrument; for if every
instrument, at command, or from a preconception of its master's will,
could accomplish its work (as the story goes of the statues of
Daedalus; or what the poet tells us of the tripods of Vulcan, "that
they moved of their own accord into the assembly of the gods "), the
shuttle would then weave, and the lyre play of itself; nor would the
architect want servants, or the [1254a] master slaves. Now what are
generally called instruments are the efficients of something else, but
possessions are what we simply use: thus with a shuttle we make
something else for our use; but we only use a coat, or a bed: since
then making and using differ from each other in species, and they both
require their instruments, it is necessary that these should be
different from each other. Now life is itself what we use, and not
what we employ as the efficient of something else; for which reason
the services of a slave are for use. A possession may be considered in
the same nature as a part of anything; now a part is not only a part
of something, but also is nothing else; so is a possession; therefore
a master is only the master of the slave, but no part of him; but the
slave is not only the slave of the master, but nothing else but that.
This fully explains what is the nature of a slave, and what are his
capacities; for that being who by nature is nothing of himself, but
totally another's, and is a man, is a slave by nature; and that man
who is the property of another, is his mere chattel, though he
continues a man; but a chattel is an instrument for use, separate from
the body. _

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