Page:The wealth of nations, volume 1.djvu/25

 mists regard the system of wage labor at the present time. Aristotle would have considered quite as Utopian the idea of a condition of society in which the relation of master and slave no longer existed, as the late Professor Jevons, for example, might have looked upon the conception of a society in which the antithesis of capitalist and laborer did not obtain. The passage in question is as follows: "It is nature herself who has created slavery.… There are in the human race individuals as inferior to others as the body is to the soul, or as the beast is to man; these are beings suitable for the labors of the body alone, and incapable of doing anything more perfect. These individuals are destined by nature to slavery because there is nothing better for them to do than to obey.… Let us conclude from these principles that nature creates some men for liberty and others for slavery; that it is useful and just that the slave should obey." The reader will perceive how exactly this passage is paralleled by the statements of middle-class economists, that incapacity, laziness, and thriftlessness will inevitably condemn a large portion of the population always to labor for a mere subsistence wage.

Such ideas as the Romans had upon economy were, as might be expected, essentially similar to those of the Greeks. The trade of the Roman Empire was so intimately bound up with the fiscal system that it consisted of little more than the gathering of taxes, either in the form of agricultural products or the precious metals. Hence there was even less likelihood than among the Greek peoples of the foundation of an economical science