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But there are some men who think that all the Justs are of this latter
kind, and on this ground: whatever exists by nature, they say, is
unchangeable and has everywhere the same force; fire, for instance,
burns not here only but in Persia as well, but the Justs they see
changed in various places.

Now this is not really so, and yet it is in a way (though among the gods
perhaps by no means): still even amongst ourselves there is somewhat
existing by nature: allowing that everything is subject to change, still
there is that which does exist by nature, and that which does not.

Nay, we may go further, and say that it is practically plain what among
things which can be otherwise does exist by nature, and what does not
but is dependent upon enactment and conventional, even granting
that both are alike subject to be changed: and the same distinctive
illustration will apply to this and other cases; the right hand is
naturally the stronger, still some men may become equally strong in
both.

[Sidenote: 1135_a_] A parallel may be drawn between the Justs which
depend upon convention and expedience, and measures; for wine and corn
measures are not equal in all places, but where men buy they are large,
and where these same sell again they are smaller: well, in like manner
the Justs which are not natural, but of human invention, are not
everywhere the same, for not even the forms of government are, and yet
there is one only which by nature would be best in all places.

Now of Justs and Lawfuls each bears to the acts which embody and
exemplify it the relation of an universal to a particular; the acts
being many, but each of the principles only singular because each is an
universal. And so there is a difference between an unjust act and the
abstract Unjust, and the just act and the abstract Just: I mean, a thing
is unjust in itself, by nature or by ordinance; well, when this has been
embodied in act, there is an unjust act, but not till then, only
some unjust thing. And similarly of a just act. (Perhaps [Greek:
dikaiopragaema] is more correctly the common or generic term for just
act, the word [Greek: dikaioma], which I have here used, meaning
generally and properly the act corrective of the unjust act.) Now as
to each of them, what kinds there are, and how many, and what is their
object-matter, we must examine afterwards.

[Sidenote: VIII] For the present we proceed to say that, the Justs
and the Unjusts being what have been mentioned, a man is said to act
unjustly or justly when he embodies these abstracts in voluntary
actions, but when in involuntary, then he neither acts unjustly or
justly except accidentally; I mean that the being just or unjust is
really only accidental to the agents in such cases.

So both unjust and just actions are limited by the being voluntary or
the contrary: for when an embodying of the Unjust is voluntary, then
it is blamed and is at the same time also an unjust action: but, if
voluntariness does not attach, there will be a thing which is in itself
unjust but not yet an unjust action.

By voluntary, I mean, as we stated before, whatsoever of things in his
own power a man does with knowledge, and the absence of ignorance as to
the person to whom, or the instrument with which, or the result with
which he does; as, for instance, whom he strikes, what he strikes him
with, and with what probable result; and each of these points again, not
accidentally nor by compulsion; as supposing another man were to seize
his hand and strike a third person with it, here, of course, the owner
of the hand acts not voluntarily, because it did not rest with him to do
or leave undone: or again, it is conceivable that the person struck may
be his father, and he may know that it is a man, or even one of the
present company, whom he is striking, but not know that it is his
father. And let these same distinctions be supposed to be carried into
the case of the result and in fact the whole of any given action. In
fine then, that is involuntary which is done through ignorance, or
which, not resulting from ignorance, is not in the agent's control or is
done on compulsion.

I mention these cases, because there are many natural *[Sidenote:
1135_b_] things which we do and suffer knowingly but still no one of
which is either voluntary or involuntary, growing old, or dying, for
instance.

Again, accidentality may attach to the unjust in like manner as to the
just acts. For instance, a man may have restored what was deposited
with him, but against his will and from fear of the consequences of
a refusal: we must not say that he either does what is just, or does
justly, except accidentally: and in like manner the man who through
compulsion and against his will fails to restore a deposit, must be said
to do unjustly, or to do what is unjust, accidentally only.

Again, voluntary actions we do either from deliberate choice or without
it; from it, when we act from previous deliberation; without it, when
without any previous deliberation. Since then hurts which may be done in
transactions between man and man are threefold, those mistakes which are
attended with ignorance are, when a man either does a thing not to the
man to whom he meant to do it, or not the thing he meant to do, or not
with the instrument, or not with the result which he intended: either he
did not think he should hit him at all, or not with this, or this is not
the man he thought he should hit, or he did not think this would be
the result of the blow but a result has followed which he did not
anticipate; as, for instance, he did it not to wound but merely to prick
him; or it is not the man whom, or the way in which, he meant.

Now when the hurt has come about contrary to all reasonable expectation,
it is a Misadventure; when though not contrary to expectation yet
without any viciousness, it is a Mistake; for a man makes a mistake when
the origination of the cause rests with himself, he has a misadventure
when it is external to himself. When again he acts with knowledge, but
not from previous deliberation, it is an unjust action; for instance,
whatever happens to men from anger or other passions which are necessary
or natural: for when doing these hurts or making these mistakes they act
unjustly of course and their actions are unjust, still they are not yet
confirmed unjust or wicked persons by reason of these, because the hurt
did not arise from depravity in the doer of it: but when it does arise
from deliberate choice, then the doer is a confirmed unjust and depraved
man.

And on this principle acts done from anger are fairly judged not to be
from malice prepense, because it is not the man who acts in wrath who
is the originator really but he who caused his wrath. And again,
the question at issue in such cases is not respecting the fact but
respecting the justice of the case, the occasion of anger being a notion
of injury. I mean, that the parties do not dispute about the fact, as in
questions of contract (where one of the two must be a rogue, unless real
forgetfulness can be pleaded), but, admitting the fact, they dispute on
which side the justice of the case lies (the one who plotted against the
other, _i.e._ the real aggressor, of course, cannot be ignorant), so
that the one thinks there is injustice committed while the other does
not.

[Sidenote: 11364] Well then, a man acts unjustly if he has hurt another
of deliberate purpose, and he who commits such acts of injustice is
_ipso facto_ an unjust character when they are in violation of the
proportionate or the equal; and in like manner also a man is a just
character when he acts justly of deliberate purpose, and he does act
justly if he acts voluntarily.

Then as for involuntary acts of harm, they are either such as are
excusable or such as are not: under the former head come all errors done
not merely in ignorance but from ignorance; under the latter all that
are done not from ignorance but in ignorance caused by some passion
which is neither natural nor fairly attributable to human infirmity.

[Sidenote: IX] Now a question may be raised whether we have spoken with
sufficient distinctness as to being unjustly dealt with, and dealing
unjustly towards others. First, whether the case is possible which
Euripides has put, saying somewhat strangely,

"My mother he hath slain; the tale is short,
Either he willingly did slay her willing,
Or else with her will but against his own."

I mean then, is it really possible for a person to be unjustly dealt
with with his own consent, or must every case of being unjustly dealt
with be against the will of the sufferer as every act of unjust dealing
is voluntary?

And next, are cases of being unjustly dealt with to be ruled all one way
as every act of unjust dealing is voluntary? or may we say that some
cases are voluntary and some involuntary?

Similarly also as regards being justly dealt with: all just acting is
voluntary, so that it is fair to suppose that the being dealt with
unjustly or justly must be similarly opposed, as to being either
voluntary or involuntary.

Now as for being justly dealt with, the position that every case of this
is voluntary is a strange one, for some are certainly justly dealt
with without their will. The fact is a man may also fairly raise this
question, whether in every case he who has suffered what is unjust is
therefore unjustly dealt with, or rather that the case is the same with
suffering as it is with acting; namely that in both it is possible to
participate in what is just, but only accidentally. Clearly the case of
what is unjust is similar: for doing things in themselves unjust is not
identical with acting unjustly, nor is suffering them the same as being
unjustly dealt with. So too of acting justly and being justly dealt
with, since it is impossible to be unjustly dealt with unless some one
else acts unjustly or to be justly dealt with unless some one else acts
justly.

Now if acting unjustly is simply "hurting another voluntarily" (by which
I mean, knowing whom you are hurting, and wherewith, and how you are
hurting him), and the man who fails of self-control voluntarily hurts
himself, then this will be a case of being voluntarily dealt unjustly
with, and it will be possible for a man to deal unjustly with himself.
(This by the way is one of the questions raised, whether it is possible
for a man to deal unjustly with himself.) Or again, a man may, by
reason of failing of self-control, receive hurt from another man acting
voluntarily, and so here will be another case of being unjustly dealt
with voluntarily. [Sidenote: 1136]

The solution, I take it, is this: the definition of being unjustly dealt
with is not correct, but we must add, to the hurting with the knowledge
of the person hurt and the instrument and the manner of hurting him, the
fact of its being against the wish of the man who is hurt.

So then a man may be hurt and suffer what is in itself unjust
voluntarily, but unjustly dealt with voluntarily no man can be: since no
man wishes to be hurt, not even he who fails of self-control, who really
acts contrary to his wish: for no man wishes for that which he does not
_think_ to be good, and the man who fails of self-control does not what
he thinks he ought to do.

And again, he that gives away his own property (as Homer says Glaucus
gave to Diomed, "armour of gold for brass, armour worth a hundred oxen
for that which was worth but nine") is not unjustly dealt with, because
the giving rests entirely with himself; but being unjustly dealt with
does not, there must be some other person who is dealing unjustly
towards him.

With respect to being unjustly dealt with then, it is clear that it is
not voluntary.

There remain yet two points on which we purposed to speak: first, is he
chargeable with an unjust act who in distribution has _given_ the larger
share to one party contrary to the proper rate, or he that _has_ the
larger share? next, can a man deal unjustly by himself?

In the first question, if the first-named alternative is possible and
it is the distributor who acts unjustly and not he who has the larger
share, then supposing that a person knowingly and willingly gives more
to another than to himself here is a case of a man dealing unjustly by
himself; which, in fact, moderate men are thought to do, for it is a
characteristic of the equitable man to take less than his due.

Is not this the answer? that the case is not quite fairly stated,
because of some other good, such as credit or the abstract honourable,
in the supposed case the man did get the larger share. And again, the
difficulty is solved by reference to the definition of unjust dealing:
for the man suffers nothing contrary to his own wish, so that, on this
score at least, he is not unjustly dealt with, but, if anything, he is
hurt only.

It is evident also that it is the distributor who acts unjustly and not
the man who has the greater share: because the mere fact of the abstract
Unjust attaching to what a man does, does not constitute unjust action,
but the doing this voluntarily: and voluntariness attaches to that
quarter whence is the origination of the action, which clearly is in the
distributor not in the receiver. And again the term doing is used in
several senses; in one sense inanimate objects kill, or the hand, or
the slave by his master's bidding; so the man in question does not act
unjustly but does things which are in themselves unjust.

[Sidenote: 1137a] Again, suppose that a man has made a wrongful award
in ignorance; in the eye of the law he does not act unjustly nor is
his awarding unjust, but yet he is in a certain sense: for the Just
according to law and primary or natural Just are not coincident: but, if
he knowingly decided unjustly, then he himself as well as the receiver
got the larger share, that is, either of favour from the receiver or
private revenge against the other party: and so the man who decided
unjustly from these motives gets a larger share, in exactly the same
sense as a man would who received part of the actual matter of the
unjust action: because in this case the man who wrongly adjudged, say a
field, did not actually get land but money by his unjust decision.

Now men suppose that acting Unjustly rests entirely with themselves,
and conclude that acting Justly is therefore also easy. But this is not
really so; to have connection with a neighbour's wife, or strike one's
neighbour, or give the money with one's hand, is of course easy and
rests with one's self: but the doing these acts with certain inward
dispositions neither is easy nor rests entirely with one's self. And in
like way, the knowing what is Just and what Unjust men think no great
instance of wisdom because it is not hard to comprehend those things
of which the laws speak. They forget that these are not Just actions,
except accidentally: to be Just they must be done and distributed in
a certain manner: and this is a more difficult task than knowing what
things are wholesome; for in this branch of knowledge it is an easy
matter to know honey, wine, hellebore, cautery, or the use of the knife,
but the knowing how one should administer these with a view to health,
and to whom and at what time, amounts in fact to being a physician.

From this very same mistake they suppose also, that acting Unjustly is
equally in the power of the Just man, for the Just man no less, nay even
more, than the Unjust, may be able to do the particular acts; he may be
able to have intercourse with a woman or strike a man; or the brave man
to throw away his shield and turn his back and run this way or that.
True: but then it is not the mere doing these things which constitutes
acts of cowardice or injustice (except accidentally), but the doing them
with certain inward dispositions: just as it is not the mere using or
not using the knife, administering or not administering certain drugs,
which constitutes medical treatment or curing, but doing these things in
a certain particular way.

Again the abstract principles of Justice have their province among those
who partake of what is abstractedly good, and can have too much or too
little of these. Now there are beings who cannot have too much of them,
as perhaps the gods; there are others, again, to whom no particle of
them is of use, those who are incurably wicked to whom all things are
hurtful; others to whom they are useful to a certain degree: for this
reason then the province of Justice is among Men.

[Sidenote: 1137b] We have next to speak of Equity and the Equitable,
that is to say, of the relations of Equity to Justice and the Equitable
to the Just; for when we look into the matter the two do not appear
identical nor yet different in kind; and we sometimes commend the
Equitable and the man who embodies it in his actions, so that by way of
praise we commonly transfer the term also to other acts instead of the
term good, thus showing that the more Equitable a thing is the better it
is: at other times following a certain train of reasoning we arrive at a
difficulty, in that the Equitable though distinct from the Just is yet
praiseworthy; it seems to follow either that the Just is not good or the
Equitable not Just, since they are by hypothesis different; or if both
are good then they are identical.

This is a tolerably fair statement of the difficulty which on these
grounds arises in respect of the Equitable; but, in fact, all these may
be reconciled and really involve no contradiction: for the Equitable is
Just, being also better than one form of Just, but is not better than
the Just as though it were different from it in kind: Just and Equitable
then are identical, and, both being good, the Equitable is the better of
the two.

What causes the difficulty is this; the Equitable is Just, but not the
Just which is in accordance with written law, being in fact a correction
of that kind of Just. And the account of this is, that every law is
necessarily universal while there are some things which it is not
possible to speak of rightly in any universal or general statement.
Where then there is a necessity for general statement, while a general
statement cannot apply rightly to all cases, the law takes the
generality of cases, being fully aware of the error thus involved; and
rightly too notwithstanding, because the fault is not in the law, or
in the framer of the law, but is inherent in the nature of the thing,
because the matter of all action is necessarily such.

When then the law has spoken in general terms, and there arises a
case of exception to the general rule, it is proper, in so far as the
lawgiver omits the case and by reason of his universality of statement
is wrong, to set right the omission by ruling it as the lawgiver himself
would rule were he there present, and would have provided by law had he
foreseen the case would arise. And so the Equitable is Just but better
than one form of Just; I do not mean the abstract Just but the error
which arises out of the universality of statement: and this is the
nature of the Equitable, "a correction of Law, where Law is defective by
reason of its universality."

This is the reason why not all things are according to law, because
there are things about which it is simply impossible to lay down a law,
and so we want special enactments for particular cases. For to speak
generally, the rule of the undefined must be itself undefined also, just
as the rule to measure Lesbian building is made of lead: for this rule
shifts according to the form of each stone and the special enactment
according to the facts of the case in question.

[Sidenote: 1138a] It is clear then what the Equitable is; namely that it
is Just but better than one form of Just: and hence it appears too who
the Equitable man is: he is one who has a tendency to choose and carry
out these principles, and who is not apt to press the letter of the law
on the worse side but content to waive his strict claims though backed
by the law: and this moral state is Equity, being a species of Justice,
not a different moral state from Justice.

XI

The answer to the second of the two questions indicated above, "whether
it is possible for a man to deal unjustly by himself," is obvious from
what has been already stated. In the first place, one class of Justs is
those which are enforced by law in accordance with Virtue in the most
extensive sense of the term: for instance, the law does not bid a man
kill himself; and whatever it does not bid it forbids: well, whenever a
man does hurt contrary to the law (unless by way of requital of hurt),
voluntarily, i.e. knowing to whom he does it and wherewith, he acts
Unjustly. Now he that from rage kills himself, voluntarily, does this
in contravention of Right Reason, which the law does not permit. He
therefore acts Unjustly: but towards whom? towards the Community, not
towards himself (because he suffers with his own consent, and no man can
be Unjustly dealt with with his own consent), and on this principle the
Community punishes him; that is a certain infamy is attached to the
suicide as to one who acts Unjustly towards the Community.

Next, a man cannot deal Unjustly by himself in the sense in which a man
is Unjust who only does Unjust acts without being entirely bad (for the
two things are different, because the Unjust man is in a way bad, as the
coward is, not as though he were chargeable with badness in the full
extent of the term, and so he does not act Unjustly in this sense),
because if it were so then it would be possible for the same thing to
have been taken away from and added to the same person: but this is
really not possible, the Just and the Unjust always implying a plurality
of persons.

Again, an Unjust action must be voluntary, done of deliberate purpose,
and aggressive (for the man who hurts because he has first suffered and
is merely requiting the same is not thought to act Unjustly), but here
the man does to himself and suffers the same things at the same time.

Again, it would imply the possibility of being Unjustly dealt with with
one's own consent.

And, besides all this, a man cannot act Unjustly without his act falling
under some particular crime; now a man cannot seduce his own wife,
commit a burglary on his own premises, or steal his own property. After
all, the general answer to the question is to allege what was settled
respecting being Unjustly dealt with with one's own consent.

It is obvious, moreover, that being Unjustly dealt by and dealing
Unjustly by others are both wrong; because the one is having less, the
other having more, than the mean, and the case is parallel to that of
the healthy in the healing art, and that of good condition in the art of
training: but still the dealing Unjustly by others is the worst of the
two, because this involves wickedness and is blameworthy; wickedness, I
mean, either wholly, or nearly so (for not all voluntary wrong implies
injustice), but the being Unjustly dealt by does not involve wickedness
or injustice.

[Sidenote: 1138b] In itself then, the being Unjustly dealt by is the
least bad, but accidentally it may be the greater evil of the two.
However, scientific statement cannot take in such considerations; a
pleurisy, for instance, is called a greater physical evil than a bruise:
and yet this last may be the greater accidentally; it may chance that a
bruise received in a fall may cause one to be captured by the enemy and
slain.

Further: Just, in the way of metaphor and similitude, there may be I do
not say between a man and himself exactly but between certain parts of
his nature; but not Just of every kind, only such as belongs to the
relation of master and slave, or to that of the head of a family. For
all through this treatise the rational part of the Soul has been viewed
as distinct from the irrational.

Now, taking these into consideration, there is thought to be a
possibility of injustice towards one's self, because herein it is
possible for men to suffer somewhat in contradiction of impulses really
their own; and so it is thought that there is Just of a certain kind
between these parts mutually, as between ruler and ruled.

Let this then be accepted as an account of the distinctions which we
recognise respecting Justice and the rest of the moral virtues.

BOOK VI

I having stated in a former part of this treatise that men should choose
the mean instead of either the excess or defect, and that the mean
is according to the dictates of Right Reason; we will now proceed to
explain this term.

For in all the habits which we have expressly mentioned, as likewise
in all the others, there is, so to speak, a mark with his eye fixed on
which the man who has Reason tightens or slacks his rope; and there is a
certain limit of those mean states which we say are in accordance with
Right Reason, and lie between excess on the one hand and defect on the
other.

Now to speak thus is true enough but conveys no very definite meaning:
as, in fact, in all other pursuits requiring attention and diligence on
which skill and science are brought to bear; it is quite true of course
to say that men are neither to labour nor relax too much or too little,
but in moderation, and as Right Reason directs; yet if this were all
a man had he would not be greatly the wiser; as, for instance, if in
answer to the question, what are proper applications to the body, he
were to be told, "Oh! of course, whatever the science of medicine, and
in such manner as the physician, directs."

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