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

id what is unjust needs no great wisdom, since any Ine can inform himself in those matters about which the iw prescribes. But what is just is not given (unless be accidentally) by the mere rules of law, but by le application of these in a particular manner to our jtions and the distribution of goods. And to know this application is a harder matter than to know what conduces to health ; though that is no easy matter. It is easv enouorh to know the meaning: of honey, and wine, and hellebore, and cautery, and the knife, but to know how, and to whom, and when they must be applied in order to produce health, is so far from being easy, that to have this knowledge is to be a physician.

For the same reason, some people think that the just man is as able to act unjustly as justly, for he is not less but rather more capable than another of performing the several acts, e.g. of lying with a woman or of striking a blow, as the courageous man is rather more capable than another of throwing away his shield and turning his back and running away anywhere. But to play the coward or to act unjustly means not merely to do such an act (though the

* You can always do the acts if you want to do them, i.e. if yon will them ; but you cannot at will do them in the spirit of a just man or as the outcome of a just character; for character is the result of a series of acts of will : cf. supra. III. 5, 22. The contradiction between this and III. 5, 2, is only apparent : we are responsible for our character, though we cannot change it at a moment's notice.

Of equity.

p. 174

doer might be said "accidentally" to act unjustly),* but to do it in a certain frame of mind; just as to act the part of a doctor and to heal does not mean simply to apply the knife or not to apply it, to give or to withhold a drug, but to do this in a particular fashion.

Justice, lastly, implies persons who participate in l' those things that, generally speaking, are good, but who can have too much or too little of them. Some there may be — as, for instance, the gods — who cannot have too much of them, and for others, i.e. for the incurably vicious, no amount is of any service, all are injurious ; but for the rest of mankind they are useful up to a certain point : justice, therefore, is essentially human.

10. We have next to speak of equity and of that l which is equitable, and to inquire how equity is related to justice, and that which is equitable to that which is just. For, on consideration, they do not seem to be absolutely identical, nor yet generically different. At one time we praise that which is equitable and the equitable man, and even use the word metaphorically as a term of praise synonymous with good, showing that we consider that the more equitable a thing is the better it is. At another time we reflect and find it strange that what is equitable should be praiseworthy, if it be different from what is just ; for, we argue, if it be something else, either what is just is not good, or what is equitable is not good ; f if both be good, they are the same.

* Cf. supra, 8, 1-4.

t Ov SiKaiov I have omitted (after Trendelenburg) as obviously wrong. We may suppose either that the original ou a-irovSaiov was altered into ov S'lKaiov, or (more probably) that ov biKaiov or ZiKaiov was inserted by a bungling copyist.

9, 17-10, 5.] JUSTICE. 175