Slavery was regarded by Aristotle as an ordinance of nature, and so probably was it by the slaves themselves in olden time.
But if inventions have increased man's power over nature very much, then the real value of money is better measured for some purposes in labour than in commodities.
The hope that poverty and ignorance may gradually be extinguished, derives indeed much support from the steady progress of the working classes during the nineteenth century.
In every age poets and social reformers have tried to stimulate the people of their own time to a nobler life by enchanting stories of the virtues of the heroes of old.
And very often the influence exerted on a person's character by the amount of his income is hardly less, if it is less, than that exerted by the way in which it is earned.
All wealth consists of desirable things; that is, things which satisfy human wants directly or indirectly: but not all desirable things are reckoned as wealth.
Individual and national rights to wealth rest on the basis of civil and international law, or at least of custom that has the force of law.
Material goods consist of useful material things, and of all rights to hold, or use, or derive benefits from material things, or to receive them at a future time.
Capital is that part of wealth which is devoted to obtaining further wealth.
The price of every thing rises and falls from time to time and place to place; and with every such change the purchasing power of money changes so far as that thing goes.
Producer's Surplus is a convenient name for the genus of which the rent of land is the leading species.
