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

There must, then, be some one common symbol for this, and that a conventional symbol ; so we call it money {yofnafia, vo/mog). Money makes all things commensurable, for all things are valued in money. For instance, let A stand for a house, B for ten minse,

TD

C for a bed ; and let A = — , taking a house to be

B

worth or equal to five minse, and let C (the bed) = ^.

We see at once, then, how many beds are equal to one house, viz. five.

It is evident that, before money came into use, 16 all exchange must have been of this kind : it makes no difference whether you give five beds for a house, or the value of five beds.

p. 159

17 Thus we have described that which is unjust and that which is just. And now that these are determined, we can see that doing justice is a mean between doing and suffering injustice; for the one is ha\ang too much, or more, and the other too little, or less, than one's due.

We see also that the virtue justice is moderation [or a mode of observing the mean], but not quite in the same way as the virtues hitherto spoken of. It does indeed observe a mean, . but both the extremes fall under the single vice injustice.*

We see also that justice is that habit in respect of which the just man is said to be apt to do deliberately that which is just; that is to say, in dealings between himself and another (or between two other parties), to apportion things, not so that he liaU get more or too much, and his neighbour less or

18 too little, of what is desirable, and conversely with what is disadvantageous, but so that each shall get his fair, that is, his proportionate share, and similarly in dealings between two other parties.

And from this we may get the definition of injustice, if for "that which is just" we substitute " that which is unjust," which is a disproportionate amount, that is, too much and too little of what is advantageous and disadvantageous respectively.

* The mean which jxistice aims at (the just thing, the due share of goods) lies between two extremes, too mnch and too little ; so far justice is analogous to the other virtues : but whereas in other fields these two extremes are chosen by different and opposite characters (e.g. the cowardly and the foolhardy), the unjust man chooses both, too much good to himself and too little to his neighbour, too little evil to himself and too mnch to his neighbour, too much good to his partisan and too little to his opponent.

p. 160

Thus injustice, as we say, is both an excess and a deficiency, in that it chooses both an excess and a deficiency — in one's own affairs choosing excess of what is, as a general rule, advantageous, and deficiency of what is disadvantageous ; in the aflfairs of others making a similarly disproportionate assignment, though in which way the proportion is violated will depend upon circumstances.

But of the two sides of the act of injustice, suffering is a lesser wrong than doing the injustice.

Let this, then, be accepted as our account, in li general terms, of the nature of justice and injustice respectively, and of that which is just and that which is unjust. (One can act ^' ^^^ siucc it is possiblc for a man to do an act 1 wuhoui' ^f injustice without yet being unjust, what acts of just)^^' injustice are there, such that the doing of them is Justin the stamps Sb man at once as unjust in this or that partifJ'betuwn cular way, e.g. as a thief, or an adulterer, or a cituensonly, „„>.>,„„ o for it implies i-yjuuvi. .

Perhaps we ought to reply that there is no such difference in the acts.* A man might commit adultery, knowing what he was about, and yet be acting not from a deliberate purpose at all, but from a momentary passion. In such a case, then, a man 2 acts unjustly, but is not unjust ; e.g. is not a thief though he commits a theft, and is not an adulterer though he commits adultery, and so omf f This passage, cap. 6, §§ 1, 2, seems to have quite a natural connection with what goes before, though the discussion is not carried on here, but in cap. 8. Again, the discussion which begins with

* It is in the state of mind of the doer that the difference lies, not in the particular things done : cf. infra, cap. 8.

5, 19-6, 4] JUSTICE. 161