The Nicomachean Ethics — trans. F. H. Peters (1881)

Again, if one man commits adultery with a view to gain, and makes money by it, and another man does it from lust, with expenditure and loss of money, the latter would not be called gi-asping, but profligate, while the former would not be called profligate, but unjust [in the narrower sense]. Evidently, then, he would be called unjust because of his gain.

* Once more, acts of injustice, in the former sense, are always referred to some particular vice, as if a man commits adultery, to profligacy ; if he deserts his comrade in arms, to cowardice ; if he strikes another, to anger : but in a case of unjust gain, the act is referred to no other vice than injustice.

• * Tliis is not merely a repetition of what has been said in § 2 : acta of injustice (2) are there distinguished from acts of injustice o
• (1) by the motive (gain), here by the fact that they are referred to * no other vice than injustice.

142 NIOOMACHEAN ETHICS OF AEISTOTLE. [Bk. V.

It is plain then that, besides the injustice which 6 is coextensive with vice, there is a second kind of injustice, which is a particular kind of vice, bearing the same name * as the first, because the same generic conception forms the basis of its definition; i.e. both display themselves in dealings with others, but the sphere of the second is limited to such things as honour, wealth, security (perhaps some one name might be found to include all this class f), and its motive is the pleasure of gain, while the sphere of the first is coextensive with the sphere of the good man's action.

We have ascertained, then, that there are more 7 kinds of justice than one, and that there is another kind besides that which is identical with complete virtue ; we now have to find what it is, and what are its characteristics. •

We have already distinguished two senses in 8 which we speak of things as unjust, viz. (1) contrary to law, (2) unfair ; and two senses in which we speak of things as just, viz. (1) according to law, (2) fair.

The injustice which we have already considered corresponds to the first of these senses of unjust.

But as "unfair" or "too much" is not the same 9 [as "contrary to law "], but stands for a part, while the latter stands for the whole ( I name " unfair " as well as " too much," because although " too much " is

* Before (1, 7) the two kinds of injastice were called dfj.eii'vfj.a, i.e. strictly, " things that have nothing in common but the name ; " here they are called avvdivvjxa, " different things bearing a common name because they belong to the same genus," as a man and an ox are both called animals : c/. Categ. I. 1.

+ TK sKrbs ayaQa. is the name which Ai'istotle most frequently uses, sometimes ri airXws iyuBd, as supra, 1, 9.

2, 6-11.] JUSTICE. 143

always "unfair," "unfair" is not always "too much"), the corresponding senses of " unjust " and " injustice " will not be the same, but different from the former senses, standing for a part, while the former stood for the whole ; for this injustice is a part of complete injustice, and the corresponding justice is a part of complete justice. We must therefore speak of justice and injustice, and of that which is just and that which is unjust, in this limited sense.

10 We may dismiss, then, the justice which coincides with complete virtue and the corresponding injustice, the former being the exercise of complete virtue towards others, the latter of complete vice.

It is easy also to see how we are to define that which is just and that which is unjust in their corresponding senses ["according to law" and "contrary to law "]. The acts which raanifest complete virtue form, we may say, the great bulk of the acts which are " according to law ; " for the law orders us to display all the virtues and none of the vices in our