Let A
be a house, B ten minae, C a bed. A is half of B, if the house is
worth five minae or equal to them; the bed, C, is a tenth of B; it
is plain, then, how many beds are equal to a house, viz. five. That
exchange took place thus before there was money is plain; for it makes
no difference whether it is five beds that exchange for a house, or
the money value of five beds.
We have now defined the unjust and the just. These having been
marked off from each other, it is plain that just action is
intermediate between acting unjustly and being unjustly treated; for
the one is to have too much and the other to have too little.
Justice is a kind of mean, but not in the same way as the other
virtues, but because it relates to an intermediate amount, while
injustice relates to the extremes. And justice is that in virtue of
which the just man is said to be a doer, by choice, of that which is
just, and one who will distribute either between himself and another
or between two others not so as to give more of what is desirable to
himself and less to his neighbour (and conversely with what is
harmful), but so as to give what is equal in accordance with
proportion; and similarly in distributing between two other persons.
Injustice on the other hand is similarly related to the unjust,
which is excess and defect, contrary to proportion, of the useful or
hurtful.
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