perty acquisition for subsistence purposes also differ. Aristotle cites five such basic modes of subsistence-centered property acquisition, which in the case of some groups may overlap and converge: "the pastoral, the farming, the freebooting, the fishing, and the life of the chase" (20).
Subsistence by its own nature implies the acquisition of limited property, or that which is merely sufficient for life and well-being. Aristotle then moves on to discuss property that is both potentially unlimited in its amount and artificial rather than natural. Such property is achieved through some medium of exchange, so that the value of property is not its instrumentality or utility but rather an aspect of exchange, at the expense of one and for the profit of another party to the exchange. The medium of or convention for this artificial exchange is money, or as Aristotle puts it, currency, which of itself is "useless for any of the necessary purposes of life" (Aristotle 25). He connects these concepts with a view toward showing how money and its acquisition, despite the fact that this view of property acquisition is ethically a "lower" (26) and "unnecessary" (27) form, has nevertheless become the measure of wealth.
The [natural] art of acquisition, and natural wealth, are different. The [natural] form of the art of acquisition is connected with the management of the household [which in turn is connected with the general acquisition of all the resources needed for its life]; but the other form is . . . concerned only with getting a fund of money, and that only by the method of conducting the exchange of commodities. This latter form may be held to turn on the power of currency; for currency is the starting-point, as it is also the goal, of exchange.
(13. It is a further point of difference that the wealth produced by this latter form of the art of acquisition is unlimited. . . . There is no limit to the end it seeks; and the end it seeks i...