The Nicomachean Ethics — trans. F. H. Peters (1881)

* i.e. (as will presently appear), it must first be determined how much builder's work is equal to a given quantity of shoemaker's work: i.e. the price of the two wares must first be settled; that done, they simply exchange shilling's worth for shilling's worth (a,vTnreirou66i) ; e.g. if a four-roomed cottage be valued at £I00, and a pair of boots at £1, the builder must supply such a cottage in return for 100 such pairs of boots (or their equivalent) .

Fixing the price of the articles is called securing equality, because, evidently, it means fixing how much of one article shall be considered equal to a given quantity of the other. It is called securing proportionate equality, because, as we shall see, the question that has to be determined is, " iu what ratio must work be exchanged in order to preserve the due ratio between the workers ? "

t Benefit to consumer = cost to producer; e.g. if £100 be a failprice for a picture, it must fairly represent both the benefit to the purchaser and the effort expended on it by the artist. I follow Trendelenburg in inserting '6 before iwolei, but not in omitting rb before irdo-xoy. Cf. note on 4, 12.

p. 155

For it is not between two physicians that exlange of services takes place, but between a phy-

^cian and a husbandman, and generally between srsons of different professions and of unequal worth ;

lese unequal persons, then, have to be reduced to equality [or measured by a common standard].*

All things or servdces, then, which are to be exchanged must be in some way reducible to a common measure.

For this purpose money was invented, and serves as a medium (jdaov, mean or means) of exchange ; for by it we can measure everything, and so can measure the superiority and inferiority of different kinds of work — the number of shoes, for instance, that is equivalent to a house or to a certain quantity of food.

What is needed then is that so many shoes shaU bear to a house (or a measure of com) the same ratio that a builder [or a husbandman] bears to a shoemaker, f For unless this adjustment be effected, no dealing or exchange of services can take place ; and it cannot be effected unless the things to be exchanged can be in some way made equaL

We want, therefore, some one common measui'e of value, as we said before.

This measure is, in fact, the need for each other's services which holds the members of a society

* The persons have to be appraised as well as their work ; but, as we soon see. these are two sides of the same thing: the relative value at which persons are estimated by society is indicated by the relative value which society pats upon their services, and this is indicated by the price put upon a certain quantity of their work.

t See note on § 12.

p. 156

together; for if men had no needs, or no common needs, there would either be no exchange, or a different sort of exchange from that which we know.

But money has been introduced by convention as a kind of substitute for need or demand ; and this is why we call it vofiiafxa, because its value is derived, not from nature, but from law {vofxog), and can be altered or abolished at will.

Requital then will take place after the wares have been so equated [by the adjustment of prices] that the quantity of shoemaker's work bears to the quantity of husbandman's work [which exchanges for it] the same ratio that husbandman bears to shoemaker.* But this adjustment must be made,t not at the time of exchange (for then one of the two parties would get both the advantages J), but while they