Filmer / Political & Economic, No Different
>Aristotle gives the lie to Plato, and those that say that political and economical societies are all one, and do not differ specie, but only multitudine et paucitate, as if there were 'no difference betwixt a great house and a little city'. All the argument I find he brings against them is this: 'The community of man and wife differs from the community of master and servant, because they have several ends. The intention of nature, by conjunction of male and female, is generation. But the scope of master and servant is only preservation, so that a wife and a servant are by nature distinguished. Because nature does not work like the cutlers at Delphos, for she makes but one thing for one use.' If we allow this argument to be sound, nothing doth follow but only this, that conjugal and despotical [lordly / master] communities do differ. But it is no consequence that therefore economical and political societies do the like. For, though it prove a family to consist of two distinct communities, yet it follows not that a family and a commonwealth are distinct, because, as well in the commonweal as in the family, both these communities are found.
>Suarez proceeds, and tells us that 'in process of time Adam had complete economical power'. I know not what he means by this complete economical power, nor how or in what it doth really and essentially differ from political. If Adam did or might exercise in his family the same jurisdiction which a King doth now in a commonweal, then the kinds of power are not distinct.