The prodigal errs in these respects also; for he is neither pleased nor pained at the right things or in the right way; this will be more evident as we go on. We have said that prodigality and meanness are excesses and deficiencies, and in two things, in giving and in taking; for we include spending under giving. Now prodigality exceeds in giving and not taking, while meanness falls short in giving, and exceeds in taking, except in small things. The characteristics of prodigality are not often combined; for it is not easy to give to all if you take from none; private persons soon exhaust their substance with giving, and it is to these that the name of prodigals is applied- though a man of this sort would seem to be in no small degree better than a mean man.
Why is the prodigal better than the mean? Because his vice can't go on forever, and therefore won't.
For he is easily cured both by age and by poverty, and thus he may move towards the middle state. For he has the characteristics of the liberal man, since he both gives and refrains from taking, though he does neither of these in the right manner or well. Therefore if he were brought to do so by habituation or in some other way, he would be liberal; for he will then give to the right people, and will not take from the wrong sources. This is why he is thought to have not a bad character; it is not the mark of a wicked or ignoble man to go to excess in giving and not taking, but only of a foolish one. The man who is prodigal in this way is thought much better than the mean man both for the aforesaid reasons and because he benefits many while the other benefits no one, not even himself.
I'm going to put in a jump break for length, but if you skip the second part you will miss one of the more entertaining discussions.
Thus, the prodigal will soon enough be forced to habituate to better methods of spending by simple poverty. Unless, that is, he turns to corrupt means of taking to make up the missing money he wants:
But most prodigal people, as has been said, also take from the wrong sources, and are in this respect mean. They become apt to take because they wish to spend and cannot do this easily; for their possessions soon run short. Thus they are forced to provide means from some other source. At the same time, because they care nothing for honour, they take recklessly and from any source; for they have an appetite for giving, and they do not mind how or from what source. Hence also their giving is not liberal; for it is not noble, nor does it aim at nobility, nor is it done in the right way; sometimes they make rich those who should be poor, and will give nothing to people of respectable character, and much to flatterers or those who provide them with some other pleasure. Hence also most of them are self-indulgent; for they spend lightly and waste money on their indulgences, and incline towards pleasures because they do not live with a view to what is noble.
One thinks of examples, but I hesitate to name them because they do not deserve the fame of recognition. A congressman whose seat came to him through family connections but whose expenses are too great even for a wealthy family may find corrupt means to fill his coffers; he continues to spend recklessly on the wrong things and the wrong people, enriching his cocaine supplier (say) or the strippers at his favorite "gentleman's club."
This is roughly what I think Aristotle means when he says that the prodigal can "make rich those who should be poor." The idea that anyone ought to be poor is un-American; we tend to think that poverty is a problem to be solved, either through capitalism or through government programs depending on our politics. Aristotle like Jesus thought that 'the poor will always be with you,' and at least for Aristotle that is not inappropriate. Some people are naturally fit for slavery because they are slavish, he thought and wrote; some for poverty. Indeed just in this passage we have seen that poverty is a helpful teacher of the prodigal: if they don't turn to corruption but accept poverty, it will solve their vice and teach them the virtue of liberality instead. With their remaining reduced means, they can learn to be better.
The prodigal man, then, turns into what we have described if he is left untutored, but if he is treated with care he will arrive at the intermediate and right state. But meanness is both incurable (for old age and every disability is thought to make men mean) and more innate in men than prodigality; for most men are fonder of getting money than of giving. It also extends widely, and is multiform, since there seem to be many kinds of meanness. For it consists in two things, deficiency in giving and excess in taking, and is not found complete in all men but is sometimes divided; some men go to excess in taking, others fall short in giving.
We can thus enumerate the divisions of this vice of meanness:
Those who are called by such names as 'miserly', 'close', 'stingy', all fall short in giving, but do not covet the possessions of others nor wish to get them. In some this is due to a sort of honesty and avoidance of what is disgraceful (for some seem, or at least profess, to hoard their money for this reason, that they may not some day be forced to do something disgraceful; to this class belong the cheeseparer and every one of the sort; he is so called from his excess of unwillingness to give anything); while others again keep their hands off the property of others from fear, on the ground that it is not easy, if one takes the property of others oneself, to avoid having one's own taken by them; they are therefore content neither to take nor to give.
The first kind -- who is being skint in order to avoid falling into poverty -- is the subject of many jokes. Some of these take on a hostile quality when they are used to make fun of an ethnic group that tends to run closer to poverty than another more dominant one, as when the English assigned the character to the Scots and mocked them for how miserly they seemed in expenditure (when they were really just poorer). This has also been done to many other groups.
One can strip the ethnicity out of the joke and see the humor in the character of the miserly man. "'Papa!" the boy exclaims. 'Instead of buying a bus ticket, I ran home behind the bus and saved a dollar!' The father immediately slaps the child. 'Spendthrift!' he screams. 'You could have run home behind a taxi and saved twenty!'" Following Aristotle's ad populum reasoning about ethics, the fact that we reliably make fun of such characters -- and reliably across centuries, even millennia -- is good reason to suppose that they might be poor characters to have.
Others again exceed in respect of taking by taking anything and from any source, e.g. those who ply sordid trades, pimps and all such people, and those who lend small sums and at high rates. For all of these take more than they ought and from wrong sources. What is common to them is evidently sordid love of gain; they all put up with a bad name for the sake of gain, and little gain at that.
It is true that pimps do not get very rich as a rule, though they can demonstrate honor at least to each other. We have lived through an era in which the broader society has sometimes at least acknowledged them in movies and songs.
For those who make great gains but from wrong sources, and not the right gains, e.g. despots when they sack cities and spoil temples, we do not call mean but rather wicked, impious, and unjust. But the gambler and the footpad (and the highwayman) belong to the class of the mean, since they have a sordid love of gain. For it is for gain that both of them ply their craft and endure the disgrace of it, and the one faces the greatest dangers for the sake of the booty, while the other makes gain from his friends, to whom he ought to be giving. Both, then, since they are willing to make gain from wrong sources, are sordid lovers of gain; therefore all such forms of taking are mean.
So we have misers and the covetous who are too cowardly to steal in one category. In the other category of the mean we have pimps, those who sack cities and temples, gamblers, footpads, and highwaymen. The first category is subject to mockery across centuries. The second category includes mostly examples of characters that draw popular ballads: you can easily think of country songs about gamblers and highwaymen, or hip-hop songs about pimps and footpads. Robin Hood stories are about thieves who take from the rich but give generously among the poor. As for sackers of cities and temples, just the other day I was quoting a ballad by Sir Walter Scott that leads off with such a story.
If we follow Aristotle's ad populum approach we would therefore tend to conclude that giving well but taking badly is better than not giving well at all. And indeed, that was exactly what Aristotle told us at the beginning: the virtue is chiefly about giving. The vices can go wrong in either the giving or the taking, but if they get the giving right they are closer to the balancing point that is the virtue.
This also preserves the fecundity I spoke of at the beginning of this chapter. It is the giving of wealth that makes the magic work, and brings flourishing to the people and the community. Thus, as Aristotle concludes, meanness is worse as a vice than prodigality.
And it is natural that meanness is described as the contrary of liberality; for not only is it a greater evil than prodigality, but men err more often in this direction than in the way of prodigality as we have described it.So much, then, for liberality and the opposed vices.
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