With unerring instinct he understood that to justify slavery he must
teach the Greeks a way of _seeing_ their slaves that comported
with the continuance of slavery.
So, said Aristotle, there are beings who are slaves by nature.
[Footnote: _Politics_, Bk. 1, Ch. 5.] "He then is by nature
formed a slave, who is fitted to become the chattel of another person,
_and on that account is so_." All this really says is that
whoever happens to be a slave is by nature intended to be one.
Logically the statement is worthless, but in fact it is not a
proposition at all, and logic has nothing to do with it. It is a
stereotype, or rather it is part of a stereotype. The rest follows
almost immediately. After asserting that slaves perceive reason, but
are not endowed with the use of it, Aristotle insists that "it is the
intention of nature to make the bodies of slaves and free men
different from each other, that the one should be robust for their
necessary purposes, but the other erect; useless indeed for such
servile labours, but fit for civil life... It is clear then that some
men are free by nature, and others are slaves. ..."
If we ask ourselves what is the matter with Aristotle's argument, we
find that he has begun by erecting a great barrier between himself and
the facts. When he had said that those who are slaves are by nature
intended to be slaves, he at one stroke excluded the fatal question
whether those particular men who happened to be slaves were the
particular men intended by nature to be slaves.
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