In
itself, then, being unjustly treated is less bad, but there is nothing
to prevent its being incidentally a greater evil. But theory cares
nothing for this; it calls pleurisy a more serious mischief than a
stumble; yet the latter may become incidentally the more serious, if
the fall due to it leads to your being taken prisoner or put to
death the enemy.)
Metaphorically and in virtue of a certain resemblance there is a
justice, not indeed between a man and himself, but between certain
parts of him; yet not every kind of justice but that of master and
servant or that of husband and wife. For these are the ratios in which
the part of the soul that has a rational principle stands to the
irrational part; and it is with a view to these parts that people also
think a man can be unjust to himself, viz. because these parts are
liable to suffer something contrary to their respective desires; there
is therefore thought to be a mutual justice between them as between
ruler and ruled.
Let this be taken as our account of justice and the other, i.e.
the other moral, virtues.
BOOK VI
1
SINCE we have previously said that one ought to choose that which is
intermediate, not the excess nor the defect, and that the intermediate
is determined by the dictates of the right rule, let us discuss the
nature of these dictates.
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