Next comes a discussion of trade, which profoundly influenced scholastic casuistry. There are two
uses of a thing, one proper, the other improper; a shoe, for instance, may be worn, which is its
proper use, or exchanged, which is its improper use. It follows that there is something degraded
about a shoemaker, who must exchange his shoes in order to live. Retail trade, we are told, is not
a natural part of the art of getting wealth ( 1257a). The natural way to get wealth is by skilful
management of house and land. To the wealth that can be made in this way there is a limit, but to
what can be made by trade there is none. Trade has to do with money, but wealth is not the
acquisition of coin. Wealth derived from trade is justly hated, because it is unnatural. "The most
hated sort, and with the greatest reason, is usury, which makes a gain out of money itself, and not
from the natural object of it. For money was intended to be used in exchange, but not to increase
at interest.... Of all modes of getting wealth this is the most unnatural" ( 1258).
What came of this dictum you may read in Tawney's Religion and the Rise of Capitalism. But
while his history is reliable, his comment has a bias in favour of what is pre-capitalistic.
"Usury" means all lending money at interest, not only, as now, lending at an exorbitant rate. From
Greek times to the present day, mankind, or at least the economically more developed portion of
them, have been divided into debtors and creditors; debtors have disapproved of interest, and
creditors have approved of it. At most times, landowners have been debtors, while men engaged
in commerce have been creditors. The views of philosophers, with few exceptions, have coincided
with the pecuniary interests of their class. Greek philosophers belonged to, or were employed by,
the landowning class; they therefore disapproved of interest. Mediaeval philosophers were
churchmen, and the property of the Church was mainly in land; they therefore saw no reason to
revise Aristotle's opinion. Their objection to usury was reinforced by anti-Semitism, for most fluid
capital was Jewish. Ecclesiastics and barons had their quarrels, sometimes very bitter; but they
could combine against the wicked Jew who had tided them over a bad harvest by means of a loan,
and considered that he deserved some reward for his thrift.
With the Reformation, the situation changed. Many of the most earnest Protestants were business
men, to whom lending money at