PG8438.B00682
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.[25] 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),[26] so that the one thinks there is injustice committed while the other does not.

PG8438.B00683
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.

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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.

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Chapter XII.

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Now a question may be raised whether we have spoken with sufficient distinctness as to being unjustly dealt with, and dealing unjustly towards others.

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First, whether the case is possible which Euripides has put, saying somewhat strangely,

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“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.”

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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?

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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?

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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.

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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.[27] 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.

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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.

PG8438.B00694
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.

PG8438.B00695
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.

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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.

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

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Chapter XIII.

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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?

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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.

PG8438.B00701
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.

PG8438.B00702
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.

PG8438.B00703
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.

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Chapter XIV.

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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.

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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.

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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.[28] 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_.

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Chapter XV.

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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.

PG8438.B00710
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.

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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.

PG8438.B00712
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.”

PG8438.B00713
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.

PG8438.B00714
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.

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Chapter XVI.

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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.

PG8438.B00717
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.

PG8438.B00718
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:[29] but this is really not possible, the Just and the Unjust always implying a plurality of persons.

PG8438.B00719
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.

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

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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.

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After all, the general answer to the question is to allege what was settled respecting being Unjustly dealt with with one’s own consent.

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Chapter XVII.

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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.

PG8438.B00725
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.

PG8438.B00726
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.

PG8438.B00727
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.

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Let this then be accepted as an account of the distinctions which we recognise respecting Justice and the rest of the moral virtues.[30]

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BOOK VI

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Chapter I.

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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.

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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;[1] 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.

PG8438.B00733
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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And so in respect of the mental states it is requisite not merely that this should be true which has been already stated, but further that it should be expressly laid down what Right Reason is, and what is the definition of it.

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Chapter II.

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Now in our division of the Excellences of the Soul, we said there were two classes, the Moral and the Intellectual: the former we have already gone through; and we will now proceed to speak of the others, premising a few words respecting the Soul itself. It was stated before, you will remember, that the Soul consists of two parts, the Rational, and Irrational: we must now make a similar division of the Rational.

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Let it be understood then that there are two parts of the Soul possessed of Reason; one whereby we realise those existences whose causes cannot be otherwise than they are, and one whereby we realise those which can be otherwise than they are,[2] (for there must be, answering to things generically different, generically different parts of the soul naturally adapted to each, since these parts of the soul possess their knowledge in virtue of a certain resemblance and appropriateness in themselves to the objects of which they are percipients);[3] and let us name the former, “that which is apt to know,” the latter, “that which is apt to calculate” (because deliberating and calculating are the same, and no one ever deliberates about things which cannot be otherwise than they are: and so the Calculative will be one part of the Rational faculty of the soul).

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We must discover, then, which is the best state of each of these, because that will be the Excellence of each; and this again is relative to the work each has to do.[4]

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There are in the Soul three functions on which depend moral action and truth; Sense, Intellect, Appetition, whether vague Desire or definite Will. Now of these Sense is the originating cause of no moral action, as is seen from the fact that brutes have Sense but are in no way partakers of moral action.[5]

PG8438.B00740
[Intellect and Will are thus connected,] what in the Intellectual operation is Affirmation and Negation that in the Will is Pursuit and Avoidance, And so, since Moral Virtue is a State apt to exercise Moral Choice and Moral Choice is Will consequent on deliberation, the Reason must be true and the Will right, to constitute good Moral Choice, and what the Reason affirms the Will must pursue.[6]

PG8438.B00741
Now this Intellectual operation and this Truth is what bears upon Moral Action; of course truth and falsehood must be the good and the bad of that Intellectual Operation which is purely Speculative, and concerned neither with action nor production, because this is manifestly the work of every Intellectual faculty, while of the faculty which is of a mixed Practical and Intellectual nature, the work is that Truth which, as I have described above, corresponds to the right movement of the Will.

PG8438.B00742
Now the starting-point of moral action is Moral Choice, (I mean, what actually sets it in motion, not the final cause,)[7] and of Moral Choice, Appetition, and Reason directed to a certain result: and thus Moral Choice is neither independent of intellect, i. e. intellectual operation, nor of a certain moral state: for right or wrong action cannot be, independently of operation of the Intellect, and moral character.

PG8438.B00743
But operation of the Intellect by itself moves nothing, only when directed to a certain result, i. e. exercised in Moral Action: (I say nothing of its being exercised in production, because this function is originated by the former: for every one who makes makes with a view to somewhat further; and that which is or may be made, is not an End in itself, but only relatively to somewhat else, and belonging to some one:[8] whereas that which is or may be done is an End in itself, because acting well is an End in itself, and this is the object of the Will,) and so Moral Choice is either[9] Intellect put in a position of Will-ing, or Appetition subjected to an Intellectual Process. And such a Cause is Man.

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But nothing which is done and past can be the object of Moral Choice; for instance, no man chooses to have sacked Troy; because, in fact, no one ever deliberates about what is past, but only about that which is future, and which may therefore be influenced, whereas what has been cannot not have been: and so Agathon is right in saying

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“Of this alone is Deity bereft, To make undone whatever hath been done.”

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Thus then Truth is the work of both the Intellectual Parts of the Soul; those states therefore are the Excellences of each in which each will best attain truth.

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Chapter III.

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Commencing then from the point stated above we will now speak of these Excellences again. Let those faculties whereby the Soul attains truth in Affirmation or Negation, be assumed to be in number five:[10] viz. Art, Knowledge, Practical Wisdom, Science, Intuition: (Supposition and Opinion I do not include, because by these one may go wrong.)

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What Knowledge is, is plain from the following of considerations, if one is to speak accurately, instead of being led away by resemblances. For we all conceive that what we strictly speaking know, cannot be otherwise than it is, because as to those things which can be otherwise than they are, we are uncertain whether they are or are not, the moment they cease to be within the sphere of our actual observation.

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So then, whatever comes within the range of Knowledge is by necessity, and therefore eternal, (because all things are so which exist necessarily,) and all eternal things are without beginning, and indestructible.

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Again, all Knowledge is thought to be capable of being taught, and what comes within its range capable of being learned. And all teaching is based upon previous knowledge; (a statement you will find in the Analytics also,)[11] for there are two ways of teaching, by Syllogism and by Induction. In fact. Induction is the source of universal propositions, and Syllogism reasons from these universals.[12] Syllogism then may reason from principles which cannot be themselves proved Syllogistically: and therefore must by Induction.

PG8438.B00752
So Knowledge is “a state or mental faculty apt to demonstrate syllogistically,” &c. as in the Analytics:[13] because a man, strictly and properly speaking, _knows_, when he establishes his conclusion in a certain way, and the principles are known to him: for if they are not better known to him than the conclusion, such knowledge as he has will be merely accidental.

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Let thus much be accepted as a definition of Knowledge.

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Chapter IV.
