Since, therefore, possession or property is a part of a family, the means of procuring it will be a part of economy, or the management of a family. For without necessaries it is impossible to live, and to live well [or happily]. For as in definite arts, it is necessary that proper instruments should be present if they design to give completion to their works, thus also it is in the management of families. But of instruments some are inanimate, and others are animated. Thus to the pilot of the ship, the tiller is an inanimate instrument, but the sailor who has the charge of the foreship is animated; for a servant in the arts ranks as an instrument. Thus also property is an instrument with respect to life. Possession, likewise, is a multitude of instruments; and a slave is a certain animated possession. Every servant also is, as it were, an instrument prior to instruments. For if every instrument when commanded, or from a preconception of its master’s will, could accomplish its work, as is reported to have been the case with the statues of Dædalus, or as the poets relate of the tripods of Vulcan, that they came spontaneously to the battle of the gods;-in this case the shuttles themselves would weave, and the plectra would play on the lyre; nor would the architect be in any want of servants, nor the master of slaves. What are therefore called instruments, are effective organs; but property is practic. For from the shuttle, indeed, something else is produced, besides the use of it; but from a garment and a bed the use alone is produced. Farther still, since making and action are specifically different, and both require instruments, it is necessary that these also should have the same difference. But life is action and not making. Hence a slave is subservient to action; but a possession is denominated as if it were a part of a thing. For a part is not only a part of something else, but wholly belongs to something else. And this is also the case with a possession. Hence a master, indeed, is alone the master of a slave, but is no part of him; but a slave is not only the slave of a master, but wholly belongs to him [as a part of his possessions]. From these things, therefore, it is manifest what the nature and power of a slave are. For he that is not his own property naturally, but the property of another person, and yet is a man, he by nature is a slave. And that man belongs to another person, who being a man is the possession of another. But a possession is a practic and separate instrument.
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